Checkmate Seaenergy’s Anaconda Wave Energy Converter Passes Latest Round of Testing with Flying Colors

The first four months of 2010 witnessed a period of intense activity for the British marine energy company, Checkmate Seaenergy Limited, involving further tank tests of their wave energy converter, the Anaconda, at Strathclyde University, Glasgow. 

The series of tests were designed to assess the fatigue life of Anaconda when deployed. Checkmate Seaenergy was pleased to announce yesterday, that the data collected from the recent round wave tank tests, which were specifically designed to test fatigue life and power output, have been completed.  The company was thrilled with the outcome of the tests which prove that the Anaconda wave energy converter captures wave energy at an excitingly economic cost.

The Anaconda technology concept is of a distensible rubber tube anchored to the seabed and floating just beneath the surface head to sea, in which bulge waves are excited by passing sea waves. The device is continually squeezed by passing sea waves. These waves form bulges in the water-filled tube and travel down its length developing the power to drive a turbine generator in the stern.

A more technical description of the technology is “as the bulge waves travel down the tube and arrive at the stern, the pressure in the chamber ahead of the power-take-off cycles above and below the tube’s rest pressure. During the high pressure part of the cycle, water passes through a set of non-return valves into an accumulator where pressure is allowed to build up. A smoothed flow of water then passes from the accumulator into a conventional hydraulic turbine which drives an electrical generator. On exit from the turbine, the water is accepted into a low pressure accumulator and is then drawn through another set of non-return valves back into the main tube during the low pressure part of the bulge wave cycle.”

Sir James Dyson, the noted inventor and entrepreneur when interviewed by a British national newspaper recently named the Anaconda device as being one of his four great innovations in Britain today.

Checkmate Seaenergy expect to conduct the first round of fundraising during the Summer of 2010 and more information on this will be made available on their website this month. In the meantime development and manufacture of the quarter scale and quarter size devices continue with a view to deploying these devices in the ocean for trials at the earliest possible opportunity.

Below is a video of the Anaconda showcasing its intriguing design.

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Posted by admin on Jun 16 2010. Filed under Ocean Power Technologies & Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.