RTI busy setting up at Carderock

Our August update may be a bit shorter than our prior updates because we are now here at Carderock during Set-up Week implementing our Test Plan with a talented and helpful Carderock crew. We hope to complete our load cell and encoder spot checks tomorrow and then Sean and I (the RTI mechanical team) will be joined by part of our electronics team (Dr. Nathan Weise and Diane Liskey) for the remainder of Set-up Week and all of Test Week. Dr. Weise, who teaches EE at Marquette U. and has built a powerful programmable digital Power Take Off system for our RTI F2 QD 1/20 scale model, has focused on the application of power electronics to Wave Energy for several years. He worked with RTI on the predecessor RTI F1 prototype while previously at the U. of Maine.

We remain confident that the global wave energy industry will converge on one or more WEC concepts which can utilize this huge global renewable resource (which is several times more concentrated than solar or wind) and produce renewable power at a lower cost than solar or wind. Once major international power equipment companies recognize that a new generation of wave energy converters (WECs) can
compete with wind power and they can apply their recent marine experience with the rapidly expanding off-shore wind market, they will make the commitments necessary to propel the WEC industry forward.

RTI believes that WEC technology convergence will lead to deep water, surface deployed, terminator type WECs which intercept and capture maximum heave and surge wave energy per cubic meter of WEC marine vessel employed (for lowest CAPEX). We also believe that the most secure way to protect surface WECs during severe sea states is to flood and submerge their float(s), an internationally patented feature of the RTI F2 QD and other RTI WECs.