Wave Energy Project In England

England is the most important wave energy research country in the world that has input millions of Pounds for the experimental research for the development of wave energy, among which the most acknowledged was Wells duck-type device. But the construction of the demonstration device was started very later in England, with less in quantity.

One set of on-shore oscillating water column wave power station with the installed capacity of 70kW was built in west of England under the support of Department of Energy in 1991. Its structure was similar to that of 40kW power station in Japan. The air chamber was in a width of 4m, depth of 10m, height of 9m. The twin-rotor symmetrical wing turbine generator with the diameter of 1.2m was installed in the backside of the air chamber. The output electricity was connected to the grid. The power station started its construction from 1986. The construction period and investment all exceeded to that of expectation. The output of the power station was not satisfactory. The efficiency of the air chamber was variable in the region of 70% to 20%, which was far lower than the design value. The average generation efficiency was about 7.5kW. Under the support of Department of Energy and EC, another similar power station with the capacity of 1MW was built near to this power station, which is now under the construction.

England Applied Research and Technology Company constructed wave energy and wind energy united power generation device called osprey in 1995, which was an offshore oscillating water column fixed device. The device was in a height of 20m and structured with steel. After being fabricated in the workshop, the device was tugged to the open sea outside the nuclear power plant for being submerged with the draft of 14m. The device was scheduled to install 2 sets of 1MW wave power generation plant and 1 set of 0.5MW wind power generation plant. The project was partly financed by EC with the total investment of 3.5 million Pounds and consumption of 850 tons steel. However, due to the error on the design of device structure, the device was sunk while being submerged and placed. The project was failed and now is planned to compensate by insurance company to reconstruct.