Message #665 From:
TheMachine Date: November 2, 2008 07:26:25 AM
Wave power : World’s First Wave Farm (Portugal) great pictures
October 31, 2008
Recently Manuel Pinho,
Portugal’s Economy Minister visited the Aguçadoura wave farm in a
ceremony to officially inaugurate the project. He travelled to the site
on the Portuguese Naval Frigate “Corte Real” where a helicopter was
launched to film the Pelamis machines and the raising of the Portuguese
flag on one of the machines. Pelamis Wave Power Ltd is the manufacturer of a unique system to generate renewable electricity from ocean waves. The Pelamis Wave Energy Converter is a
revolutionary concept, the result of many years of engineering
development by PWP. It was the world’s first commercial scale machine
to generate electricity into the grid from offshore wave energy and the
first to be used in commercial wave farm projects.
The Pelamis Wave Energy Converter is a semi-submerged, articulated
structure composed of cylindrical sections linked by hinged joints. The
wave-induced motion of these joints is resisted by hydraulic rams,
which pump high-pressure fluid through hydraulic motors via smoothing
accumulators. The hydraulic motors drive electrical generators to
produce electricity. Power from all the joints is fed down a single
umbilical cable to a junction on the sea bed. Several devices can be
connected together and linked to shore through a single seabed cable.
Pelamis offers technological, economic and environmental advantages including:
* Survivability ‘built in’
* 100% available technology
* No maintenance carried out at offshore site
* No offshore intervention required
* ‘Hands Free’ operation
* Lowest kWh costs in the market
* High return potential
* Commercial track record
* Verified and insured
Current production machines are 140m long and 3.5m in diameter with
3 power conversion modules per machine. Each machine is rated at 750kW.
The energy produced by Pelamis is dependent upon the conditions of the
installation site. Depending on the wave resource, machines will on
average produce 25-40% of the full rated output over the course of a
year. Each machine can provide sufficient power to meet the annual
electricity demand of approximately 500 homes. (text by Pelamis) http://www.pelamiswave.com/
