Pilot testing of a submerged wave energy converter system off the San Diego, California, coast has been completed by CalWave Power Technologies. The scalable xWave unit demonstrated over 99% system uptime during the open-ocean trial.

The fully submerged architecture enabled the device to weather several major storms, including two representative of the largest storms in a typical 10-year period for a utility-scale system. The generator is equipped with wave load management mechanisms comparable to pitch and yaw control in modern wind turbines. These components allowed for rapid and effective reduction of storm loads on all parts of the system, ultimately proving a cost-effective design without the need for expensive structural over-design.

Data from drifting and bottom-mounted hydrophones, deployed in collaboration with the U.S. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Triton Initiative, reveal no adverse impacts of xWave operation on marine biota.

The xWave generator being recovered after 10 months of fully submerged open-ocean testing. Source: CalWave Power Technologies

A 100 kW version of the xWave system is being developed for a two-year deployment off the coast of Oregon at PacWave South, the first accredited, grid-connected, pre-permitted wave energy test facility in the U.S. The company is also engineering the CalWave X100 system for island grid and remote community applications, and the utility-scale CalWave X800 for wave park farms and colocation with offshore wind farms.