Lockheed Martin will build the world’s largest wave energy farm off the coast of Victoria, Australia, via engineering.com:
The PowerBuoy is a piston style wave energy harvester. Most of it is below sea level, anchored to the ocean floor. A piston is connected to a floating island – the Take Off Unit – that bobs up and down with the waves. Those movements are converted to rotational motion that spins a generator. The 600 Volt outputs of several PowerBuoys are connected to an Underwater Substation Pod whose output goes to shore through a subsea cable.
The project will roll out in three phases, with the first phase producing 2.5 MW peak. It’s likely that they’ll use Mark 3 PowerBuoys, which have been thoroughly tested off the coasts of Hawaii and Scotland. Each Mark 3 weighs 180 tons and can be towed to its location by a standard tugboat. It has a peak output of 866 kW and a projected life of 25 years.
Under development is the Mark 4 PowerBuoy, with a peak output of 2.4 MW. As part of the agreement, Lockheed Martin will assist OPT with the design and manufacturing of its product line, so we’re likely to see the Mark 4 in later phases of this project.
Compared to offshore wind power, wave energy offers several advantages. First, the converters only stand 38 feet (11.5 m) above the ocean surface, so they’re barely visible from the shoreline. According to the US Department of Energy, “The size of the PowerBuoys when viewed from shore would be [equivalent to] approximately 1.6 millimeters when viewed from arm’s length.” They also produce less noise and have practically no impact on ocean life, including birds. Wave energy can be predicted up to 72 hours in advance, giving grid operators plenty of notice regarding changes in electricity production.
8-6-2021 (August 6, 2021) is the Snakiest day of the year and it’s also this year’s CircuitPython Day! The day highlights all things CircuitPython and Python on Hardware. See you there!
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
