The new facility, which will come up at Newport, will support innovations in wave energy technologies by harnessing the important wave energy resources along the US coastlines.
Named as the Pacific Marine Energy Center South Energy Test Site (PMEC-SETS), the new facility is intended to be operational by 2020.
Energy Department Science and Energy Under Secretary Franklin Orr said: “Testing innovative wave energy devices at full scale in open water is an important step toward harnessing one day a reliable energy resource. Anyone who has swum or surfed in moderate ocean waves knows something of the power they represent.
“This new facility will help us to advance the science and technology of wave energy devices, and to identify the challenges we will ultimately need to overcome in order to achieve commercial deployment.”
PMEC-SETS will be designed to test wave energy “converters” that make use of the energy of ocean waves before converting it into electricity.
Anticipating that PMEC-SETS will become the most advanced wave energy test facility in the world, NNMREC director and OSU College of Engineering professor Belinda Batten said: “These devices have to perform in hostile ocean conditions; stand up to a 100-year storm; be energy efficient, durable, environmentally benign – and perhaps most important, cost-competitive with other energy sources.
“This facility will help answer all of those questions, and is literally the last step before commercialization.”
Subject to appropriations, the award from DOE will be used for the design, permit and construction of the open-water, grid-connected national wave energy testing facility.
PMEC-SETS will feature four grid-connected test berths enabling researchers to test full-scale device concepts for converting wave energy.
