Oscilla Power has been selected for a $1.1 million Small Business Innovation & Research award (Phase II) from the US Department of Energy (DoE) for the development of a 50 MW grid-connected wave energy project with energy storage.
The funds received from the award will allow the continuation of work previously completed by Oscilla Power that emphasized the advantages of co-locating energy storage with wave energy systems. As part of this new project, Oscilla Power will further develop its energy storage concept and investigate the effect of interconnecting the 50 MW farm using its Triton wave energy devices with a power grid. The work is expected to indicate that large farms of wave energy devices can produce more reliable power than existing wind or solar plants.
Oscilla Power will be working with Brayton Energy to develop the energy storage component. Brayton has previously developed an underwater compressed air energy storage system with the US DoE and the US Navy. Oscilla Power will also be working with experts from Oregon State University and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to understand the array and interconnection aspects for the planned 50 MW wave energy farm. This work is expected to start soon and will continue over the next two years.
Commenting on the development, Tim Mundon, VP Engineering, Oscilla Power, said, “Although ocean waves have very high short-term variability, they are much more consistent over longer periods of time, which is a key advantage of wave energy. Understanding how very large farms of devices interact may help us identify further optimizations that will drive down the costs of utility-scale wave energy.”
