Improved On-Board Energy Storage for Wave Energy Convertors

New opportunities for ocean wave energy adoption can be opened up if the inherent power variability associated with wave power generation can be mitigated through storage. Further, larger storage quantities may be able to allow scheduled or offset dispatch; for example, allowing a significant fraction of the energy that is captured during times of high wave intensity in the evening to be provided to the grid during the early AM hours when demand starts to rise and before solar generation can meet this demand. In this project, Oscilla Power will explore by integrating underwater compressed air energy storage (CAES) with its Triton wave energy convertor (WEC) to mitigate the above the issues. The Triton WEC would act to house the compression and generation equipment, as well as provide the primary power source. Further, as the power is generated on-site, the grid connection would only need to have a capacity to match the peak supply, rather than the peak demand, which could be an important distinction for constant supply, base-load applications. The overarching goal of the overall Phase 1 and Phase 2 projects is to successfully design, build, test and demonstrate a concept design for an energy storage system that can be integrated with OPI’s Triton WEC to provide power smoothing and load balancing functionality. The specific technical objectives of the Phase I Program are: (1) Down-select a preliminary concept for energy storage on board the utility-scale Triton system; (2) Demonstrate through numerical modeling, the performance benefits in terms of power smoothing and load balancing that can be offered by on-board storage; and (3) Modify the existing concept design for the utility-scale Triton system to include the new energy storage system.Addition of on-board energy storage can make a meaningful impact on reducing the Triton’s LCOE such that it can compete effectively against not just other renewables, but also conventional sources of electricity. It can also make ocean energy a viable option in areas that have low to moderate wave energy density (e.g., the US east coast). If successful, the project will result in new high-paying manufacturing and installation jobs.