CX-100568 Categorical Exclusion Determination

Survivability Enhancement of a Multi-Mode Point Absorber
Award Number: DE-EE0007346
CX(s) Applied: A9, B3.6
Water Power Program
Date: 03/10/2016
Location(s): WA
Office(s): Golden Field Office

The US Department of Energy (DOE) is proposing to provide funding to Oscilla Power Inc. (Oscilla) to design and validate a survival mode for the Triton Wave Energy Conversion (WEC) device. The proposed project would be composed of five tasks, plus project management and reporting.

Task 1 would include baseline design work. This would include information gathering, analysis, and computer modeling to establish an initial design. Under Task 1 Oscilla would then fabricate a 1/60th model scale of the design and test the design in a still water tank. Fabrication would occur at the Oscilla facility in Seattle, Washington, which is a pre-existing lab facility that is designed for such fabrication processes. The 1/60th scale model would be fabricated from aluminum, stainless steel, steel, foam, and plastics, and would include electrical instrumentation. The 1/60th scale model would include a foam float which would be approximately ½ meter in diameter and ½ meter in height, as well as a heave plate underneath the float, which will be approximately ½ meter in diameter and .1 meter in height. All material handling would be conducted pursuant to existing lab safety procedures. Once fabricated the model would be float-tested in an existing still tank designed for testing similar devices. The goal of the float-test is to test the hydrodynamic design of the heave plate. The still tank, which would be filled with water, is approximately 3 meters in diameter and 1 meter deep. Tasks 2 and 3 would involve design and modeling work. This work would occur at the Oscilla facility, as well as at the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Golden, Colorado and Sandia National Lab (SNL) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In addition, these tasks would involve third-party validation of the design work. Validation would be analysis work and would occur at Glosten associates in Seattle, as well as DNV-GL in San Diego, California. All work in Tasks 2 and 3 would consist of information gathering, data analysis and computer modeling. Task 4 would include the fabrication and testing of a 1/30th scale device. Fabrication would take place in the lab at Oscilla; as in Task 1. Materials used, and lab procedures, would be the same as in Task 1, though the scale model would be slightly larger. The 1/30th scale model would contain a float approximately 1 meter by .75 meters and a heave plate approximately 1.1 meter by .2 meters . The model would then be tested in the Oregon State University Hinsdale test facility. The Hinsdale test facility is a purpose built water and wave testing facility designed for testing WEC models such as the model proposed here. Task 5 would include analysis of the information gathered in the previous tasks, and design modifications based on that analysis. All work in Task 5 would be information gathering, data analysis, and computer modeling in nature.