Wave Energy Project Looking For Support — Crowdfund It!

Can We Harness Ocean Waves to Power Your Home? from Experiment on Vimeo.

Wind energy experts have harnessed the movement of air to produce cheap electricity. The movement of water, waves, is another source of energy being explored and utilized.

To use wave energy to create electricity, one realizes the force of water.

Marcus Lehmann, who is 80% to his $9,622 wave energy funding goal with just 2 days left, inquires, “Can we solve future energy and freshwater crises with the Power of Ocean Waves?”

Marcus and his team clearly think it could help. “Our engineering team at UC Berkeley is developing a new Wave Energy Converter that is able to efficiently harvest this energy,” he writes.

“With your support, we can continue our development towards a first pilot plant in the ocean and want to reward our Top 50 backers with special Thank-You-Packages (details at end of the page)!”

Apparently, this isn’t the same old wave energy technology we’ve been covering for years, and the crew thinks it can be economically competitive. Furthermore, the team already has a prototype:

In our wave tank laboratory, we have developed a proof-of-concept-prototype and have successfully tested the functionality and ability of the converter to cancel waves and generate power.

While solar and wind power are currently cheaper and are more abundant, wave energy also has some advantages. “The main advantage of Wave Energy over Solar and Wind Energy is its high availability, reliability and higher power densities (Solar: 0.3 kW/m2, Wind: 3 kW/m2, Waves: 30 kW/m).”

Here’s more on the funds the team is pursuing and what they will be use for:

Budget Overview

The budget will be used for:
1. Hydraulic Pumps – Two competing power take-off technologies will be tested separately: a) industrially available double acting reciprocating linear cylinder pumps, and b) large scale diaphragm type pumps.

2. Carpet Material – Carpet materials will be purchased from an industry partner and expert in elastomers.

3. Wave Gages – In order to evaluate the efficiency of the prototype under various sea states, the essential values that are to be determined experimentally are the wave height before and after the device and the generated flux. This will be measured with Wave Gages and a non invasive Electromagnetic Flowmeter.

4. Magnetic Flow Meter – For high accuracy real time measurement of the system’s performance, a magnetic flux measurement instrument will be purchased.

Head on over to the “experiment” page to chip in!