The one number they didn't even touch on is actually HOW MUCH ENERGY does it capture, how much electrical energy does it produce. Efficiency is irrelevant if the amount of energy entering the device is actually very small. A wave going up and down inside the device is actually minuscule. Does it produce enough energy to run a hundred homes or just half a home? If you'd need hundreds or thousands of these devices to produce any reasonable amount of energy then they're a failure. But no such info is discussed in the video or provided by the company.
It's a scam to take government money there is a lot of these going on right now tax prayer pay for it. And after 5 years of development it's suprise suprise it's a failure. Like solar road way...
wrong. efficiency is a lot more important than the amount. If the concept is highly efficient, you can just scale it up. More interesting would be the energy per cost of production.
@@bloodhoug82wrong! If you get a lot of energy efficiency do not matter. Nuclear powerplants are not very efficient but still generate a lot of energy. What is important is the LCOE.
In 24 hours it would apparently generate power to support approximately 164 households. From an interview I found with the CEO: “When the unit is generating 40 kW of power in reasonable wave conditions, you could extrapolate the amount of energy to be in the order of 1MWh in a 24 hour period."
Because it’s just a technology demonstrator, they’re only interested in whether the concept is viable so only efficiency and reliability matter plus it’s very site specific so giving a number would be useless for all reasons you’d want a number …
For those that have asked, I believe the uniwave 200 generated an average 40kW over the trial period. Peak generation, based on the turbine used, was around 200kW (hence the name). Keep in mind this is essentially a prototype-demonstrator rather than a pre-production model and the up-time was less than 80%. If anyone knows better regarding the actual power generated, please let me know on a comment and I'll update the post.
12 million dollars for 40kw LOL! I bought a 7kW gasoline generator for $200, so I could buy 6 more, pay for all the gasoline, and still be ahead by $11-million and change...
@@anonydun82fgoog35 mass production does wonders to the cost of products. This to my knowledge is the only one of these in existence and is still in its testing stages. The device doesn't use crazy rare materials or anything like that and doesn't seem to complex.
The sea is VERY hard in King Island because it is essentially narrowed to ONE THIRD of what it was. It was a trade wind route. My great great grandfather was the lighthouse keeper there.
The company blurb describes the wave condition there as "the best in the world" for generating this sort of power. Of course that means that performance anywhere else in the world will be far less than what they got here...
As long as there’s little resistance to air getting out of the way, that shouldn’t be much of a problem. The kinetic energy of the water on the way into the device should be stored as gravitational potential energy with a very high rate of efficiency. If you attempted to harvest energy with the water on the way up, it simply would not go as high, and you’d get proportionally less energy on the down stroke.
No comment on power generation? The key numbers are efficiency and availability, not power generation? Even if it's 100% efficient and 100% available, if it's only generating a small amount of electricity, who cares? How do you do a tech review on power generation and not mention the amount of power generated?
The sea is very destructive so it'd be interesting to see how long it lasts and what the ongoing maintenance costs are as that has been the downfall of most wave energy systems up to this point or as the saying goes "the sea is a cruel mistress"
The sea is VERY hard in King Island because it is essentially narrowed to ONE THIRD of what it was. It was a trade wind route. My great great grandfather was the lighthouse keeper there.
it does and I like the idea, but it boils down to cost per watt and we got no such info from this video. because it could easily be that just building a concrete wall and solar panels further inland is many times cheaper. but again for esthetics I like this
I'm an Ecologist but also a realist, tech like this can help phase out petroleum, what politicians are wanting to do is unsustainable, but if technology like this is utilized properly, then it would be feasible. Now we just need to work on Mining practices.
@@foundationofthought7155 Cost per watt is very important, but so is diversifying renewables. When its cloudy and stormy, solar won’t perform well while wave energy will
@@Fenthule sounds like the solar highway argument is back. Only because something can serve two purposes do not mean it's a good idea. Most of the time bildning two different things is more efficient.
many have tried to harness waves but hit cost problems due to maintenance but this shallow water one has good potential I think. Seeing the unit where it is brought up the topic of visual pollution for me but if it could be integrated into a sea wall or pier or another structure that problem could be addressed.
An artist could have a blast with this. It could be a kinetic sculpture, utilizing the blow hole as a visual feature if water was added to the exhalation of the machine.
The schematic is incomplete - it appears the compressed air on the waves' up stroke just vents to the atmosphere, while the turbine only works on the "suck" stroke as the water recedes. You want to extract energy on both strokes, and keep the turbine spinning in the same direction on both strokes by using blades that reverse according to which pressure is highest. Or use two turbines in parallel like a diac, so one works in one direction, and the other turbine works in the other with a valve to select which is in operation. I had all this worked out 50 years ago as a kid in the bath with a squeezy bottle!
The same type of setup was tested on Isla in the Hebrides. Last time I visited it had been abandoned. The electric school bus it was supposed to power left parked & unused.
Imagine they put a couple of these as the foundation for each offshore wind generator (obviously only ones with waves) then you'd get double generation, and also a larger range of generating opportunity (small waves but windy & no wind but with big waves. Whole harbour walls could incorporate this tech!
@@renevile Yeah, definitely true. It won't be useable 24/7 but could definitely increase the range of conditions for energy production. I think having a harbour wall built with these could be a good passive generator and is probably it's strongest application.
@@kwisatzhaderach1458 Yeah, for sure. But this sort of tech is in the proof of concept phase with new designs in progress. But, if we look at the ammount of energy in one of those blow holes, I think a good ammount of energy could be harnessed if we work out the best way to do it! We can't put all our eggs in one basket. If we have many different types of generation, chances are that one of the types will always be generating electricity. One thing that needs to change is how we store our electricity to be used later. That would make all these small scale, low output setu[ps to work best!
@@renevile or how much chaos there will be after these 'low lying islands' have a hurricane/tsunami and now you have a region heavily dependent on highly specialized infrastructure for power Plus did you see the size of that thing? Most islands are dependent on tourism, so how much is the economy going to suffer if you line these up on the coastline? Green energy is good but CA, TX, and Germany have already proven the devastating consequences of having a grid run primarily on it. The net impact is worse than the benefit. People need to stop researching ways of generating the energy and figure out how to store it that doesn't require strip mining
For those that are curious "As an example, when the unit is generating 40 kW of power in reasonable wave conditions, you could extrapolate the amount of energy to be in the order of 1MWh in a 24 hour period."
A couple of questions. 1. How much energy does the blowhole produce on average? 2. How much energy does it produce on a calm day? 3. If the environmental impact of one unit is minor, what is the impact if 10 or 100 units are required? 4. The blowhole only appears to generate power when the water level is dropping? How does this system ensure the consumer has constant power?
@@EdFrench_uk When one scratches the surface of "new" it is often incremental to ideas thought of or tried before. The economics are often not communicated very directly. I am drawn toward this type of construction as it keeps the moving parts out of the seawater. In my mind, without investigating, that, should wave energy be economically viable, this construction should have the best shot at achieving competitiveness. I probably behooves me to investigate the Hebrides installation and see what "improvements" have been incorporated into this project. I suspect that is was not developed without knowledge of the installation you speak of.
This is a cool piece of technology that cleverly uses the naturally occurring force of waves. If the diagram shown is accurate, then they could easily increase it's efficiency by making the water bellows section in the shape of an dome or upside down end of a horn. This would allow for the capture of more air initially and increase the air pressure throughout the waves push. As you are moving more air with more force in the same wave motion efficiency should go up.👍
Thank you! Would love to see more on this: total energy produced, wildlife interaction, more eco-friendly production of the concrete used to build it. Other interesting tech? Please investigate Exergyn's shape memory alloy heat pump.
I know its a working prototype but that seems like a huge structure for just one blowhole. hopefully they can evolve it for a more compact footprint. The seawall idea they mentioned sounds good.
Being a prototype it would be a temporary structure so the mass will be needed to keep it in place. If the tech proves to be viable then maybe anchoring a smaller structure into the sea floor may be an option or perhaps having a "wall" of units will allow kw/footprint to be much larger.
The only point of this device is to extract the maximum amount of government grants and venture capital funding possible in the shortest amount of time. It doesn't make sense on paper and certainly not in practice.
@@anonydun82fgoog35 cynical curmudgeon. I hope somebody does something nice for you for absolutely no reason at all. Maybe it'll put you in a better mood.
I worked with a company that developed a similar system, working with the Navy and some Pacific Island entities. Used wave rise/fall and essentially a giant piston/flywheel to spin a generator. Can't say much more here, but big issues are proximity to grid and "scale". These must anchor to sea floor. Ideal is conversion of near offshore oil rigs. Also, connect to pumped hydro is nice if you've got a reservoir and elevation nearby.
Are you sure? Surely this system only works effectively at the coast where the sea floor rises and forms vertical energy transfer. Out in the ocean where oil rigs are located this effect does not occur
@@procatprocat9647 lol. There are waves in the ocean. But yes, the near offshore part is relevant for many reasons. Like power transmission lines. Imagine a giant mostly empty drum or barrel that weighs 5,000 lb. It'll float, bob up and down with waves, and If that up and down motion is pushing up against a piston and flywheel it can generate a lot of power.
@@scottk7011 it's been years but at one time someone had a spring and linear motor inside a sealed tube that was inline with a cable to the seabed... the motion was generating power by the movement of the bobbing... never saw how it turned out but it looked really simple ... had a buoy type float at the top ...
from their site: "Previous OWC technologies have all been bidirectional. The WSE technology, however, operates unidirectionally. This results in the WSE turbine being simpler, more robust and reliable, and exhibiting a higher energy conversion efficiency. The only moving parts in the technology are the turbine and bespoke valves, all of which are well above the water line. There are no moving parts in or below the water." That's their thinking on it...
There was a wave energy generator in Port Kembla in 2014 I think. The company went bust and left the generator there to rust away. It was not able to produce sufficient energy to be viable. Maybe this is different but as many comments have said, what is the power output?
Why would you not have used the air pushing and pulling the turbine? It seems with a small amount of engineering you could have both pushing the turbine. Was it moving parts that caused you to focus on the directionality of the flow of air?
Similar concept was tested years ago using large vertical tubes with turbines attached on top that bobbed up and down with waves. The wave would push the turbine up and when it would fall the air rushing through it would generate electricity. I believe the idea was to use these in a farm type of concept like solar idea. Not sure what happened to that experiment.
They had to be deployed in deep water and tethered and were found to suffer from storm damage and corrosion that was hard to fix due to location. Also at the time, the cost per Kw/Hr was seen as not good but we now know that the fossil fuel price was rigged because of hidden subsidies. Some of the previously tried ideas may reappear but only if a better one does not present itself.
It would be interesting to see if it could be adapted to being the base of a offshore wind turbine. I also recently saw an interesting video on buoyancy based energy storage where basically you have buoyant objects that you pull under water with electric motors running to pulleys on the bottom of the ocean. The buoyant objects store potential energy. You sink them when you have surplus energy, and then let them pull back to the surface, turning a generator, when you need the power back. I know offshore wind tends to be farther out where combining it with these wouldn't let you use them as part of a breakwater, but I'd think that a lot of the rest of the infrastructure- the power lines going to shore, even the base of the towers for wind turbines anchored to the floor (as opposed to floating wind turbine platforms) would seem like they could overlap pretty easily.
This seems like it's desperately needed in places like Puerto Rico and could be experimented with there for research helping those people in need there.
It's really difficult to give you a direct number for that given how varied wave conditions are. Would you want an average? That's a pretty misleading statistic to the efficacy of the device given that it's directly correlated with average wave energy over the trial period. Would you like a peak energy value? Also misleading. The best option to understand how efficacious an energy harvester is, is the ratio to the total energy produced to the total energy available which is... You guessed it.. 50%. Which honestly as far as energy harvesters go, isn't that bad.
@Steven Bulfer Average is not misleading, otherwise solar energy wouldn't be a thing. Energy storage is used to smooth out a variable supply. Know what's misleading? Supplying just an efficiency ratio. 50% of nothing is.. nothing. Maybe wave energy isn't viable in the first place. Maybe this is a scam just like solar roadways and spinlaunch.
@@rootvalley2 I think you're confusing kWh and kW. If something produces 5 kW, it will have produced 5 kWh after an hour and 10 kWh after two hours. 5 kW would mean 120 kWh every 24 hours. (Though that thing is huge, so it probably produces more)
Can you work with this company and create a open source think tank that people like myself can propose new design ideas or improvements to it as all we care about is seeing a new world in front of us and not necessarily more money.
In the short span of time it took me to watch this video, I already came up with a more efficient way generate electricity with this design. I won't go into it here as I am off to file a patent for the idea.
I'm curious about how it adjust throughout tidal range. Like most blow holes operate far better at mid - high tide. And "availability" means what? Perfect swell size 80% of the time? Also notice she generates on "suction" only, could power be doubled by generating bidirectional ly? Also if they place 3 or more to catch different wave phase, the output could be smoothed out rather than a surge every 10 odd seconds. Also the local power supply must also "surge"? to counter balance the wave surge? So many questions 😁
What is important is the "levelized cost of energy." How much does it cost to produce 1 Kw over a period of time ... taking all costs into consideration. For example, wind has a levelized cost of energy of 2-3 cents. This is excellent. Hydroelectric is good, PV is much higher. Doing a report on an energy source without mentioning this metric is negligent.
The diagram shows incoming air as the generator supply but not on the exhale side, why isn’t there one? Wouldn’t that add to the amount of generated electricity?
More often than not, the out-going air comes in a form of spray, which causes (very very very) unwanted flooding and corrosion to the turbine blades and shaft, thus intercepting the spray and duct it out before it reaches the turbine would be beneficial for the longevity of the device.
@@conghaoxu7344 true but I think that could be achieved easily enough with some design tweaks. I'm picturing at 3:33 where the arrow is pointing outwards, if it instead of going straight out the back, fell back down into a second chamber that's connected to the first one with a single way valve - basically a flap that when the wave pushes into the front forces the flap closed and continues the blowhole concept, but then when it's sucking air back in the water in that second chamber would get sucked back into the first chamber, then by having the 2nd generator aimed upwards (provided it doesn't interfere with the airflow intake of the one above - maybe out the sides if it does impact it?) with a basic angled mesh infront would stop MOST of the water from getting in there, there would obviously be a little bit of light spray that might make it through, but minimally.
I believe the CNET written article on this indicated they determined it was more efficient with a single direction generation. Does seem odd, but they tested it both ways apparently.
Great story on the wave energy system. Wishing them well. Years ago I designed a system that could be integrated into this unit and would be significantly more efficient. I may contact them and detail the design (I seek no compensation whatsoever). Who knows what could come of this. Do you have any contact info for the people involved.
It seems like these things come along every few years. The problems with the previous ones were durability. Put any of these in an area that generates lots of wave power and the wave power (and the salty water) destroy the machine. Put them where they won't get damaged and they don't produce much energy.
Is it a floating unit or is it fixed on the sea bed? Sitting on the sea bed or as part of sea defence wall would only be efficient in areas with very little tidal range.
As some others have commented, apparently this system averages 40kW of output for around 20 hours a day. For reference, that's the equivalent of about 160 kW of solar panels that generate electricity for 5 hours a day (~800 panels, which is roughly $200k). To store the 800 kWh that this system would generate each day (to then use over the remaining 15 hours, you'd need 600kWh of battery storage, which is about 50 Tesla Powerwalls (~$500,000) So if this unit could cost under a million, it just might have a future to replace solar/wind + batteries in some coastal areas. Otherwise, it sounds like it would be easier to just buy the solar and batteries.
G E ( General Electric ) Did this year's ago By placing a tube on shore at the sea waters edge ( Ireland I Believe ) The trick is to capture the energy on the inward and then the outward push , flow , stroke . To to this the turbine blades must be able to generate electricity as the flow passes through in both directions . This produces the most effective and efficient capability of capturing electrical energy . Thank you .
Moving parts underwater?...what could go wrong? What's an expected PBP w/ local operating expenses & grid power costs? cost per kWh or MWh? I'll bet it's multiples higher than Lg. Scale wind or solar.
I’d like to see a look into where we are with molten salt reactors, specifically how close they are to being ready for real-life production. Wave energy is far more realistic as a renewable energy source than windmills and solar because to no one’s surprise, people also require electricity at night and when the wind is not blowing.
Molten salt energy storage/transfer is an ongoing chemical hazard and nightmare. Very cool in principle, but the molten salt is incredibly corrosive which means that components fail all the time, and when, not if, the molten salt drops in temperature and solidifies then the entire pipe section has to be replaced.
@@nickryan3417 Salt is corrosive, yes, both in a reactor and in the sea. Steel hull ships have survived that for over 100 years and special alloys will resist this for at least the time of the reactor. That the salt solidified when you stop heating it, is a brilliant fail-safe which protects against explosions and other accidents. Compare this with old-fashioned reactors which melts down if you stop cooling or blows up if it overheats. As far as I know, molten salt is sadly not ready for production, hence my request.
@@vondahe The molten salt used for energy storage/transfer is *very* different to sea water, which is just water with salt dissolved in it. When the molten salt cools it solidifies which is, as you note, is rather safer than something that goes boom, but given the temperature and corrosiveness of it if the pipework did rupture you would not want to be anywhere near it. The problem is where the corrosion damages components which halt the flow and then the salt solidifies in the pipes and mechanisms. All of which then need to be replaced, which is far from clean, safe or quick.
The weight of the receding water (negative pressure) would not provide as much energy as the wave itself. It’s also important to have the air chamber cleared for the next wave.
"Peak output is 40,000 watts" (Per Medium and New Atlas) So basically as much as a backup generator, but it doesn't actually produce that 24/7, only in "ideal conditions".
Beside not the mention of the actual out put power .. Depending where the location the infrastructure needed especially from the unit to carry the energy to a specific location would need to be addressed from an environmental point of view .
I did a theoretical design of this type of wave energy production during my bachlors. Just noticed that it is producing electricity in one direction only(wave going down). it should generate power on the both side (wave going up and wave going down) as both conditions can produce pressure difference which would run the turbine.
I think it is the best option forvextracting wave energy. Can't wait to see units in Europe. Especially ibteresting for Portugal and the Bay of Bisquay, but I thinkntherecthey need to be scaled up a bit. What I like about it, is that it Tuesday and night. As wave hights tend to be higher in stormy, I would expect them to balance lower PV yields in that type of weather. Also I think that they would beautifully complement the wind parks in the North Sea.
There is no clean energy generated in this video .. in fact it's quite the oposite, the construction of this ..... "thing" .. cost FAR more energy then it will never produce...
The metric I want to know is the cost of electricity (LCOE) it can achieve and how it stacks up with more conventional forms of electricity generation.
why do the force the air to make an abrupt 90deg turn??? and why not put a turbine in both intake and outlet?.. seems daft... also they dont mention Kwph output
The unit first converts water movement into air movement. (Based on volume.) This results in a loss because water has a lot more mass then air. Also the unit seems to only be generating electricity in one direction. (Air inlet) I don't see how efficiency can be 50%. That number seems doctored. Most likely they are saying their turbine is 50% efficient based on the the air flow of the inlet NOT based on the energy of the wave.
On their website: "Previous OWC technologies have all been bidirectional. The WSE technology, however, operates unidirectionally. This results in the WSE turbine being simpler, more robust and reliable, and exhibiting a higher energy conversion efficiency. The only moving parts in the technology are the turbine and bespoke valves, all of which are well above the water line. There are no moving parts in or below the water." So, it seems a very consciously chosen path... drives down complexity ?
Interesting that it captures the air on the intake motion rather than the exhaust motion. Instead of a blowhole it functions like a vacuum hole. I'm guessing the pressure exerted upward would be enough to lighten or loosen the unit from the seabed.
This seems a really important point. Although the “blow hole” is moving water and air upwards, what is doing the work driving the turbine is due to the downward suction during the reverse phase. Air is being sucked through the turbine. Surely the efficiency of the whole operation depends upon the existence a one-way valve (not shown) stopping the chamber filling with the air it just pushed out not through the turbine (?)
This is an oscillating water column device using a wells turbine - exactly the same technology that has been trialled in the past in other parts of the world (including Wavegen Limpet in the UK). One of the problems with this technology is that if it is placed on the shoreline there is less available energy to harvest and if it is located on the open ocean this device looks to be too large and cumbersome in storm events. 80% availability is not good for a device that would need expensive and dangerous boat trips out to fix issues. I agree with other comments that it is a big omission to not mention the power output or energy yield of the trial system. Also some basic graphics and context on the way the technology works would have been good for viewers. I wonder if an engineer was involved at all in the production of this video.
At no point did they actually say how much energy it can produce. Efficiencies are great and all, but if it can only make 100 watts then it’s irrelevant. How is output compared to solar and wind? How much power do you get per dollar of construction and installation costs?
This is cool. Non-stop 24x7 40kw generator. Seems like two units side by side would be able to generate full-time inward pressure for the turbine rather than half-time.
Wouldn't it be more sensible to harvest wave energy by letting a floating Platform float on the waves and deriving the energy from the movement up and down (e.g. with a pulley on the see floor that goes up to a generator. This thing seams to be a way of producing wind that can be made to electricity with a wind-turbine. Also, how much energy does it produce. A number that is very important and remains unmentioned.
i found out that the project cost 12.3 million probably australian dollars. it has a 200 kw generator. so pretty small . the cost efficiency is terrible compared to a wind turbine which costs 1.3 million us dollars per megawatt. so it's only advantage could be as part of a breakwater where the cost is reduced and in an area where the waves are 24/7 . hard to see it become economic. it would need to cost 1/10 and generate 5 times as much. so X 50 to be equal with wind.
The availability number for solar at 90%? Not sure where you got that number but that's not even possible considering the day and night cycle. Same with wind, there's very few places where the wind blows even 50% of the time
Ocean wave is a rock-shattering power (figuratively and literally), so I'm interested to know just how long this installation will lasts. Especially with how polluted our ocean nowadays, there's chance the hole might get clogged with debris. Moreover such place usually will get infested with marine lives in no time, so there's a need to do regular cleaning.
Hmm. Wondering if you could implement this some way into boat. The energy generation would't need to be very big but when it's constant it makes it interesting in live aboard vessels...
You'd have to anchor the generation unit to something very solid, the energy flow requires the difference between the motion of the sea and the static generator. I'd also be concerned about how noisy these things are, I suspect rather loud but this video didn't have any real sound of it running.
@@nickryan3417 Yeah. Normal bigger live aboard sailboat has quite alot of mass to achieve the effect I think. I wonder if some kind of device could be attached easily on the transom (where the movement of the boat is greatest). I could imagine some kind of pipe with small air turbine on top would work here. Just stick the pipe under water and air should move inside there pretty rapidly. Adding one-way valve to make the turbine spin only on one direction like in this example. Where could I find that kind of turbine though... 🤔
The use of large boulders hollowed out with this blowhole technology for generating energy has many uses and would make the shoreline look more natural and might be cheaper . Off shore it could be used to generate hydrogen of ammonia and collected by ships .
I recall that around 20 or more years ago, one of these systems was built in Scotland. Sadly it sank whilst being towed to its site. I think the turbine was recovered.
I think that a direct mechanical device that converts reciprocal movement into rotation needed by a generator like that of a crankshaft would be better. I wonder if the sun is charging the salt water of the sea and there is a way to get the electrical energy from the ocean without killing the planet?
Good idea. Smart thinking. Collect data for proof of concept and commercial viability. The scale up for commercial applications. Everyone should look into this idea. 😊😊😊
Why not generate bidirectionally? While they sell their project as being unique for being unidirectional, that seems like lost lost opportunity to me. Would Tesla Valves not accomplish the passive design goal here?
This is old technology. Their is one off the Irish coast on Cape clear that was installed in the late 1970s early 1980s... it was designed by Queens University in Belfast and in my opinion is it is definitely the most efficient way to produce clean electricity.
