The extraordinary UniWave 200 it is a marine wave platform that uses a type of blowhole to create changes in air pressure that drive a turbine and produce energy. After a year of testing, the system reports excellent results.
The peculiarity of UniWave is that it can be towed to any coastal location and connected to the local energy grid. It is designed so that wave motion pushes water into a specially designed concrete chamber, pressurizing the air in the chamber and forcing it through an outlet valve. Then, as the water retreats, it generates a powerful vacuum, which draws air through a turbine at the top and generates electricity that is fed into the grid via a cable.
In summary: the system draws energy from the entire column of water entering its chamber. And that makes it more efficient than wave energy devices, which harvest energy only from the surface or bottom of the sea.
All-in-one barrier and energy
Among the key innovations of this system produced by Wave Swell Energy, a design that allows for much cheaper and simpler turbines, with less maintenance, longer lifespan and no inconvenience to marine wildlife (all moving parts of the plant are above the waterline).
Most of all, however, what works well is the fact that this design makes UniWave embeddable in dams and breakwaters: in other words it is possible to fight coastal erosion and at the same time also collect clean energy.
Uniwave for wave motion, tests: a triumph
Last year the company installed a 200kW test platform off King Island, facing the notoriously rough seas of Bass Strait between Tasmania and Australia. There, it provided clean, reliable energy to the island's microgrid 24 hours a day for 24 months. During testing, the WSE team also made some live changes to the design, further improving its performance.
“We wanted to demonstrate that our wave conversion technology would provide electricity to a grid with any type of wave. And we succeeded,” he says Paul Geason, CEO of WSE, in a press release. “In some cases, the performance of our technology exceeded expectations thanks in part to technological improvements made during the year.”
“We have achieved a conversion rate from wave to electricity by 45 to 50% in a wide range of wave conditions. It's a huge improvement over past devices. And it shows that the time has come for wave energy to join wind, solar and energy storage as part of a modern energy mix.”
The King Island platform will remain in place until at least the end of 2022 and the company is now gearing up to enter production.
Take a look at the UniWave 200 test platform running in the video below.