If we assume that the x800 is an 800 kW unit, that suggests CalWave will need to make 1,250 unit sales to make that happen. Indeed, CalWave's stated target of deploying 1 GW of commercial marine energy technology by 2035 is depressingly humble in 13 long years' time, the company hopes to have rolled out a capacity around that of a single average nuclear power plant. We do know that the company's next move will be to deploy a 100-kilowatt version of the xWave to be tested off the coast of Oregon for two years at PacWave South, "the nation's first accredited, grid-connected, pre-permitted wave energy test facility." The company's "utility-scale" designs are called the x100 and x800.įrankly, anything operating at the kilowatt scale might be of some interest to islanders and small coastal communities, but these kinds of numbers aren't really relevant to national energy grids looking to scale up and decarbonize energy production. We don't know, for starters, how much power the thing produces. So how excited should we be? I'm not sure, honestly. A third-party assessment verified it posed no danger to marine life. CalWave says the x1 platform "achieved high performance as targeted and predicted," that it operated under fully autonomous control for about 80% of its operating time, that it demonstrated more than 99% uptime with zero operator interventions, and correctly shut itself down during particularly rough conditions with waves up to 15 feet high.Īnti-corrosion coatings and sacrificial anodes helped to prevent rust, and the company trialed an anti-biofouling coating as well, noting that uncoated areas did experience some biofouling, but that these didn't including moving parts, and there was no impact on operations. The most recent open-ocean test was scheduled for 6 months, but was extended to 10 months. CalWave says the device's resiliency is the key to its market advantage, and that it should end up being a much lower-cost device than others in the space. These spools can also be automatically and individually braked to different degrees when the device gets pummeled by unusually large waves, to buffer the more extreme forces such that it can either shut down altogether, or retool itself to harvest energy from weather that would put other renewables out of commission. Running it underwater, says the company, protects the xWave from catastrophic damage when the ocean's in a bad mood.
From this, and some CAD illustrations in the same video, we assume that the xWave has four spools connecting cables to the sea floor, and it generates energy as these spools wind and unwind while the platform is pushed around by the waves. "As a wave passes over the top, you get a pressure wave that causes motion relative to the sea floor, and with our anchors on the sea floor, we convert that relative motion to power," said COO Dan Petcovic in a 2021 video. Indeed, here's the clearest statement we can find. The company is curiously vague in its communications about how its xWave device actually works.
The xWave is a boxy, buoyant little platform that's towed out to sea and anchored to the sea floor, with a tether length that holds it fully underwater. Most projects seem to stay in the testing phase for an awfully long time, and nothing to date has managed to go commercial on a grand scale.ĬalWave is probably a good example this company has been announcing the successful completion of tests since at least as far back as 2016, when it had a miniature 1/20th-scale model running in a test basin. The ocean is a famously harsh environment for man-made objects, and energy assets need to pay off their significant capital expenses over decades of continuous operation to attract investment dollars. On the other hand, extracting that energy is proving tricky. There's some promise in it as CalWave points out, "ocean waves are 20-60 times more energy-dense, predictable and consistent compared to other forms of renewable energy." Wave energy is one of the less common renewable energy sources, and while there are many wave energy projects under development, the industry itself can be considered more or less embryonic at this stage. CalWave has been working on its xWave clean power technology for many years now, and has announced the successful conclusion of an extended open-ocean test off the coast of San Diego, in which the device demonstrated over 99% system uptime.
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