InfinityWEC is unique in its capability to host and benefit from predictive control strategies, designed to provide highly efficient instant force control through a combination of ball screw actuators and hydrostatic pre-tension. Ocean Harvesting is collaborating with leading researchers to implement a new type of controller called a nonlinear moment-based MPC, developed at COER, Maynooth University, Ireland. This controller substantially improves energy output and is fast enough to run on a real-time control system.
Ocean Harvesting is also collaborating with AI experts to implement machine learning techniques which will improve the accuracy of the system model in the controller.
“Following the recent update with hydrostatic pre-tension, reducing the weight of InfinityWEC’s PTO by forty percent, the new controller is another step change in Technology Performance Level, or TPL, and material efficiency,” says CEO Mikael Sidenmark.
During 2023 Ocean Harvesting will implement the new controller and optimize InfinityWEC’s performance through numerical simulations. The controller will then be implemented in a high-fidelity simulation environment, and in the real-time control system in our scale 1:10 PTO test rig, in preparation for the scale 1:3 sea trial project planned to start in January 2024.
Ocean Harvesting is raising 3 MEUR to finance the 1:3 scale sea trial in 2024-25. The project has already received a 2 MEUR grant from the Swedish Energy Agency.
InfinityWEC is engineered for sustainable large-scale production and effective logistics. InfinityWEC’s prime mover (buoy), is made of concrete casted with locally sourced materials at the installation site in a process common in civil engineering, minimizing transportation. A special high strength and sustainable concrete mix has been developed in collaboration with RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, enabling a prime mover with equivalent weight to a conventional steel hull, but at 1/4 of the cost, a 1/3 of the CO2 footprint and which is 10x faster to manufacture.
The excellent performance and reliability, combined with a modular design where all critical parts are easily manufactured, transported, installed and maintained, make InfinityWEC a very competitive solution for the future global energy market.
The market for InfinityWEC ranges from utility-scale wave farms for electricity and hydrogen production to the power and H2-gas grid on the mainland, to off-grid power supply for island communities and other offshore industrial installations such as oil- & gas platforms and aquaculture.
