RTI Wave Power celebrates and then gets back to work

A brief team celebration followed the March 1 Wave Energy Prize announcement of Finalists. Soon thereafter, however, reality set in with lots of work before us between now and July 18 to do our promising RTI F2 QD WEC technology justice. Sean Lewis of our RTI “mechanical team” has produced initial CAD 3D drawings of our 1/20 RTI F2 QD prototype. It is designed such that most key dimensions (and weight distributions) effecting performance can be modified as our RTI “hydrodynamics team” (Dick Ackers, Michael Macnicoll, and Toby Dewhurst) refine our F2 QD numerical model with the excellent data obtained during the Prize 1/50 scale test week at the new U. Maine Alfond W2 (Wind-Wave) Facility and use our updated model to optimize 1/20 scale F2 QD performance. We are one of several Wave Energy Prize teams who booked 1/20 scale model wave tank testing time at the Alfond W2 Facility.

We were sorry to learn that Justin Stocker, the leader of our RTI “electronics & controls” team, will play a more limited role as he relocates to the west coast. We are pleased, however, that Rick Sparrold has joined our E&C team. Rick is recently retired from Raytheon Missile Systems where he was Senior Principal Electrical Engineer and spent his entire professional career after graduating from U. of Arizona as an EE. We are also considering additional electronics & controls team additions as we attempt to implement a challenging “adaptive control” strategy for our 1/20 scale RTI F2 QD.

Rohrer Technologies, Inc. (RTI) has previously successfully built and wave tank tested two 1/25 scale RTI prior generation WECs (the G2 and F1) which preceded the F2 QD but they used less complex control systems and more comfortable time schedules.