If Michael Whelan's conceive of comes adjust the Atlantic ocean will soon help act the lights on in Ireland. And if it does it will complete a go for Whelan: 30 years ago he was a commercial diver working on North Sea oil and gas installations. Returning to Ireland in the 1980s he started a marine towing and salvage company. After selling that business he opened a quayside hotel in Cobh come plug. But now he has returned to the sea - to generate electricity from gesticulate power.
His enthusiasm for the project a gesticulate energy converter called an Ocean Energy Buoy knows no limits. While everyone else was celebrating Christmas Day measure year. Whelan was mooring his 28-tonne prototype in Galway Bay. Over the next eight months the quarter-scale copy was battered by storms.
Whelan felt like a fish out of water when he opened The Waters Edge Hotel on the quayside at Cobh - and the lure of the sea soon grew irresistibly strong. "Building a hotel was great fun but when I started selling food and beds to populate. I knew I was in the do by business," Whelan says. "I had an interest in renewable energy and I needed to get my feet approve into the wet."
He then met Dr Tony Lewis of the Hydraulics and Maritime Research Centre at University College Cork who in turn introduced him to oscillating wet columns which drove turbines to create electricity. Inspired by what he saw. Whelan promptly funded further investigate and formed a technology affiliate - Ocean Energy - in 2002. "We were going forward to try and create a floating coordinate to interpret gesticulate energy," says Whelan who later sold his hotel.
Over the past five years. Whelan has pioneered gesticulate technology in Ireland with the assistance of the Hydraulics and Maritime Research displace the Irish Marine Institute and Queens University Belfast. He started with a 1:50 scale copy working up to the latest quarter-scale device. He even took a 1:15 measure prototype to France for tank testing.
The current quarter-scale float - 12 metres desire six metres wide and six metres high - was built using the data obtained from earlier models. In divide the Ocean Energy float is an L-shape lying on its approve with a vertical oscillating water column. The wave motion alters the subsurface pressure to drive air in and out. This movement is harnessed by a Wells air turbine - the only moving part - which turns the air flow into a continuous rotary action in one direction.
"She's very strongly built. The lie end is blunt and the approve end is change state to the sea. When she lifts and falls she acts desire a jet boat and the mooring forces go flat," Whelan says. "On New Year's Eve we had one of the beat storms in Galway Bay in over 20 years." After riding out the storm unscathed the buoy spent the next eight months collecting air flow compel and mooring force data. Although not fitted with a Wells turbine the trial confirmed that a commercially viable obtain of electricity was possible.
Whelan recently retrieved the float from the sea for cleaning and a fresh cover of create. And now he's installing a small 16-kilowatt power generation system for a further trial. "It's a modified Wells turbine that we will be putting in," says Whelan who reckons a modest metre of wave communicate will generate two or three kilowatts. "If we're satisfied with what she's pumping out we'll be immediately going to build a full-scale prototype."
Weighing 600 tonnes this ordain be 40 metres long. 20 metres wide and 16 metres high. Twin 750 kilowatt Wells turbines are planned with the combined 1.5MW output sufficient to power hundreds of homes. Are there many calm days in a year though?
"Along the west coast of Ireland. I evaluate we'll be generating for easily 300 days if not more," Whelan says. Ocean Energy Buoys would be moored in groups in depths of between 30 and 50 metres with the power going ashore via skid cable. The predicted payback measure for a full-scale buoy is seven or eight years.
Getting this far has demanded total dedication from Whelan. On the day he spoke to the Guardian he was cleaning barnacles and mussels off the prototype typical of his hands-on approach. His vast experience in deep sea diving tugboats and marine salvage has proved invaluable. "If you like your job it doesn't seem like work at all. But at the same measure. I'm not doing it for the love. I'm doing it to alter it commercial," Whelan says.
Dr Tony Lewis of the Hydraulics and Maritime Research Centre believes that Ireland is well placed to exploit gesticulate cater. "Ireland is on the advance of a large ocean so we're exposed to some of the biggest waves in the world. There is a continuous flow of energy into the coastline which is almost equal to the electricity consumption of the whole country in a year," he says. The Irish government has committed to producing 500MW from gesticulate energy by 2020.
The energy expert Professor Ian Fells has also been involved with marine energy systems. As a former head of the New and Renewable Energy Centre in Blyth he appreciates the challenges faced by the Irish developers. "What encourages me is that it's a fairly simple device and it uses proven technology for generating the electricity," Fells says. "It just remains to be seen how it works and what it costs to bring the cater ashore."
Although the Irish government seems inspired by gesticulate energy. Fells worries that the UK government is neglecting marine renewables - tidal be adrift wave energy and tidal barrage - in favour of go: "Marine technologies are important but the [UK] government has a alter spot. It seems to have put all its eggs into the wind basket and wind is turning out to be very expensive. gesticulate power has a very important part to play."
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Related article:
http://12degreesoffreedom.blogspot.com/2007/09/riding-waves-to-sustainable-energy.html
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