| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| AMEX: OPTT | |
| Industry | Renewable Energy, Wave Power, Sustainable Energy |
| Founded | Princeton, New Jersey, United States (1984) |
| Founder | George W. Taylor Joseph R. Burns |
| Headquarters | Monroe, New Jersey, United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Terence J. Cryan (chairman) George H. Kirby (President and CEO) |
| Website | (1999 established) |
Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) is a U.S. publicly owned renewable energy company, providing electric power and communications solutions, services and related for remote offshore applications. The company's PowerBuoy wave energy conversion technology is theoretically scalable to hundreds of megawatts and the generated energy from wave power can be supplied to the grid via submarine cables. Several projects were undertaken around the world, but the economic viability of the theoretical concept has been problematic.
Ocean Power was involved in several large PowerBuoy projects, including a very large Australian project with Lockheed Martin from 2012–2014, when they determined that "the project wasn’t 'commercially viable,' and [the company] changed its strategy. It has since commercialized the technology by providing power and communications to remote sites such as offshore oil fields." [1]
Ocean Power Technologies Australasia Pty Ltd, OPTA is an Australian-owned subsidiary of Ocean Power Technologies Inc (OPT), previously engaged in wave power projects in Australia. Ocean Power Technologies Limited is the UK-based wholly owned subsidiary.[ not verified in body ]
The company's primary product is the PowerBuoy wave generation system. [21] It uses a "smart," oceangoing buoy to capture and convert wave energy into low-cost, clean electricity.
The company's secondary product, the Hybrid PowerBuoy, generates energy independent of wave motion, instead relying on a solar panel array for charging the onboard lithium iron phosphate batteries. Backup power is provided by a liquid propane 1 kW engine. [22]
Unlike the energy-generating PowerBuoy and hybrid variant, the Subsea Battery is a fully submersed energy-storage vessel housing lithium-iron phosphate batteries for powering subsea payloads. The batteries supply 132 kWh (nominal capacity) with up to 15 kW peak power delivery. [23]
The USP [24] is an electrical power aggregator from up to ten offshore power generation devices, be they wind, wave power or other, into one common interconnection point for transmission to the onshore power grid. The USP can likewise be configured to supply onshore power to offshore devices.
Wave power is the capture of energy of wind waves to do useful work – for example, electricity generation, water desalination, or pumping water. A machine that exploits wave power is a wave energy converter (WEC).
The Pelamis Wave Energy Converter was a technology that used the motion of ocean surface waves to create electricity. The machine was made up of connected sections which flex and bend as waves pass; it is this motion which is used to generate electricity.
The National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) was established in November 1993 as an autonomous society under the Ministry of Earth Sciences in India. NIOT is managed by a Governing Council and is headed by a director. The institute is based in Chennai. The major aim of starting NIOT was to develop reliable indigenous technologies to solve various engineering problems associated with harvesting of non-living and living resources in India's exclusive economic zone, which is about two-thirds of the land area of India.
Subsea technology involves fully submerged ocean equipment, operations, or applications, especially when some distance offshore, in deep ocean waters, or on the seabed. The term subsea is frequently used in connection with oceanography, marine or ocean engineering, ocean exploration, remotely operated vehicle (ROVs) autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), submarine communications or power cables, seafloor mineral mining, oil and gas, and offshore wind power.
The Wave Hub is a floating offshore wind and wave power research project. The project is developed approximately 10 miles (16 km) off Hayle, on the north coast of Cornwall, United Kingdom. The hub was installed on the seabed in September 2010, and is a 'socket' sitting on the seabed for wave energy converters to be plugged into. It will have connections to it from arrays of up to four kinds of wave energy converter. A cable from the hub to main land will take electrical power from the devices to the electric grid. The total capacity of the hub will be 20 MWe. The estimated cost of the project is £28 million.
Renewable energy in the United Kingdom contributes to production for electricity, heat, and transport.
CETO is a wave-energy technology that converts kinetic energy from ocean swell into electrical power and directly desalinates freshwater through reverse osmosis. The technology was developed and tested onshore and offshore in Fremantle, Western Australia. In early 2015 a CETO 5 production installation was commissioned and connected to the grid. As of January 2016 all the electricity generated is being purchased to contribute towards the power requirements of HMAS Stirling naval base at Garden Island, Western Australia. Some of the energy will also be used directly to desalinate water.
The European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) Ltd is a UKAS accredited test and research center focusing on wave and tidal power development based in the Orkney Islands, UK. The centre provides developers with the opportunity to test full-scale grid-connected prototype devices in unrivalled wave and tidal conditions.
A floating wind turbine is an offshore wind turbine mounted on a floating structure that allows the turbine to generate electricity in water depths where fixed-foundation turbines are not feasible. Floating wind farms have the potential to significantly increase the sea area available for offshore wind farms, especially in countries with limited shallow waters, such as Japan, France and US West coast. Locating wind farms further offshore can also reduce visual pollution, provide better accommodation for fishing and shipping lanes, and reach stronger and more consistent winds.
Wave power in Australia is being developed as the country has a long and largely deep-water coastline. It is one of several regions of the world where wave power projects are being considered.
Evopod is a unique tidal energy device being developed by a UK-based company Oceanflow Energy Ltd for generating electricity from tidal streams and ocean currents. It can operate in exposed deep water sites where severe wind and waves also make up the environment.
Marine energy or marine power refers to the energy carried by ocean waves, tides, salinity, and ocean temperature differences. The movement of water in the world's oceans creates a vast store of kinetic energy, or energy in motion. Some of this energy can be harnessed to generate electricity to power homes, transport and industries.
Atlantic Wind Connection (AWC) was a proposed electrical transmission backbone by Trans-Elect Development Company that could be constructed off the East Coast of the United States to service off-shore wind farms. Google Energy, the investment firm Good Energies, and Japanese trading firm Marubeni announced that they were investing "tens of millions of dollars" in the initial development stage of what could become a $5 billion project. Financing for the project never lined up, reportedly because the low cost of natural gas made large scale offshore wind uncompetitive.
Wave power in the United States is under development in several locations off the east and west coasts as well as Hawaii. It has moved beyond the research phase and is producing reliable energy for the Grid. Its use to-date has been for situations where other forms of energy production are not economically viable and as such, the power output is currently modest. But major installations are planned to come on-line within the next few years.
PowerBuoy is a series of low-carbon emission marine power stations manufactured by Ocean Power Technologies (OPT), a renewable energy company located in New Jersey. PowerBuoys are most commonly used to provide power to offshore payloads generated through eco-friendly means. The PowerBuoy is designed to act as an Uninterruptible power supply. It stores energy in onboard batteries so that it can still provide continuous power through low generation periods.
Ocean Power Technologies Australasia Pty Ltd (OPTA) is an Australian company, a subsidiary of Ocean Power Technologies Inc (OPT) of the United States, a renewable energy company, providing power generation devices, services and related equipment for the extraction of energy from ocean waves.
Azura is a wave power device currently being tested in Hawaii. It is connected to the municipal grid providing electricity to Hawaii. According to the United States Department of Energy, this is the first time that a wave power generator has been officially verified to be supplying energy to a power grid in North America. This has been verified by the University of Hawaii. The device can generate 20 kilowatts of power.
MARMOK-A-5 is an offshore electrical power generator that uses wave energy to create electricity. This device is a spar buoy installed in the maritime testing site Bimep, in the Bay of Biscay. It is the first grid-connected maritime generator in Spain, and one of the first in the world.
