Two Finnish inventors have developed devices that generate electricity from the power of waves, writes Yle news site.
One of them is a diver Rauno Koivusaari, designer of the ‘WaveRoller’, which is ready for the deployment off the Portuguese coast after years of development.
A WaveRoller device is a plate anchored on the sea bottom at its base. The back and forth movement of the tidal surge moves the plate, transferring the kinetic energy created to a piston pump.
Heikki Paakkinen has designed “the Penguin”, a 220 tonne vessel (excl. ballast), approximately 30 meters in length which has the generator spinning inside.
Given that the wave energy is completely new, companies will have to build full-scale models to be able to negotiate with power companies.
“We can prove these things with calculations and tests, but in the end people will only believe when they see something for real. So we make a full-scale version,” Paakkinen says.
Experts at the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, which have funded both wave energy projects, are hopping to see the growth in wave energy market.
[mappress]
Offshore WIND staff, July 30, 2012; Image: aw-energy