Oscilla Power, Inc. (OPI) has successfully completed its 2013 open ocean testing, conducted at Isle of Shoals, NH.
OPI’s prototype system was deployed in mid-July and recovered in mid-September, 2013. For nine weeks, two of OPI’s “Gen 1” magnetostrictive power generators operated according to plan, turning Atlantic ocean waves into electricity. The field trial was jointly executed by OPI and the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Ocean Renewable Energy and was supported by SBIR funding from the US Department of Energy.
“Oscilla Power made major strides forward in 2013. We went from successfully testing a Gen 1 generator in our lab to deploying multiple generators in Puget Sound, then in the Department of Interior’s Ohmsett wave tank and finally in the Atlantic.” said Chief Executive Officer Rahul Shendure. “We are looking forward to deploying the next generation of our technology, built around commercial-scale ‘Gen 3′ magnetic cores, later this year.”
OPI’s “Gen 3” generator will be 4x the size, in terms of the cross-sectional area of the magnetic core, of the Gen 2 generators tested in 2013. A next generation system incorporating the first Gen 3 generator, currently under assembly at the company’s Seattle facilities, will be tested in the summer of 2014 at the same New Hampshire site.
Press release, January 30, 2014; Image: oscillapower