Canada-headquartered Waterotor International Corp., a hydrokinetic energy company, has unveiled its Megarotor system design called “The Big Cajun” at the Floating Wind Solutions 2022 convention in Houston, Texas.
The 20-megawatt Big Cajun is said to be the first hybrid ocean system that simultaneously extracts energy from slow-moving water and wind.
According to Wateroror, the patented technology utilizes unique rotor stacks in any water speed and conventional wind turbines to extract large amounts of power.
Currently under development in Louisiana, the Big Cajun is Waterotor’s first commercial ocean deployment.
Its first application is said to allow Big Oil to reduce its carbon footprint and drastically reduce costs by replacing diesel-generated electricity production on platforms that each consumes 33,000 gallons of fossil fuel per day at an annual cost of over USD 70 million.
”Waterotor’s technology will provide access to a massive, untouched source of renewable energy for the first time,” said Fred Ferguson , Waterotor’s Founder & CEO.
”No one has successfully commercialized energy production from flat moving water. This is the beginning of a new era.”
The company expects the technology to be licensed by ”a major global corporation and/or power company” within the next year.
Waterotor has identified several potential sites for The Big Cajun, including an initial site located off Suriname and Guyana.
Western boundary currents are said to be among the fastest non-tidal ocean currents on Earth, reaching speeds of more than five miles per hour (2.5 metres per second) and containing as much as 100 times the combined flow of the world’s rivers.
According to Waterotor, The Big Cajun is being developed with major contractors under the direction of marine architect Herman J. Schellstede.
U.S. Capital Global (USCG), San Francisco-based investment banking firm, is engaged by Waterotor to raise further funding for the project.