Hydro-piezoelectricity: A new approach to Underwater Autonomous Power Generation

The solicitation addresses the need for a large rechargeable battery cache to be used for continuously supplying power to the rechargeable propulsion system of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV)s. Further, for extremely compelling economic reasons, it is desired that the recharge energy be acquired locally from the environment, i.e. either surface wave energy or deep water ocean currents. The proposed solution utilizes the concept of Hydropiezoelectricity whereby thin plastic sheets of piezo material(PVDF) are employed to directly convert the large available mechanical energy to electrical power for charging the battery cache. The proposed Phase I effort consists of analysis and simulation tasks designed to determine both the technical and economic feasibility of the approach in typical shallow and deep ocean environments. An additional task (optional), will be a laboratory demonstration of the approach using power generation modules that are being developed by OPT as part of its efforts to exploit the technology commercially as a source of primary energy.