Notícias
4th INORE Symposium
09-14 May 2010, Devon, South West England, UK.
Call for abstracts open
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Event organised by:
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Following the success of the Ocean Power Conference in Lisbon, Green Power Conferences and the European Ocean Energy Association (EU-OEA) have joined forces to announce Ocean Energy, the official EU-OEA annual conference.
The event will create a networking platform for the ocean energy community, policy makers and potential investors to examine the ocean energy business opportunity. Key highlights of the event will include addresses from the European Commission, major utilities, banks, public & private funds, and a “Dragon’s Den” style face to face meeting with potential investors.
Leading experts will address the necessary steps for accelerating industry development, including, policy development, creating industry standards, collaboration between the public and private sectors and the continued development of new and reliable technologies.
Delegates will learn from best practice case studies from market pioneers and gain a clear understanding of the current regulatory framework, investment criteria, project development status, grid connectivity issues and the latest technological developments.
The improvement of the Pico Plant
The Pico Plant, managed by the WavEC, is based on the Oscillating Water Column (OWC) technology, one of the three or four conversion principles that have showed to be more promising on a global scale. This is the reason why over the last years - and even without public funding or significant support of our associates - we decided to dedicate an enormous effort to make the plant work in a stable way.
The electrical components and its installation were designed and supplied by our associate Efacec and the maintenance of the plant was of the responsibility of Kymaner, another of our associated companies.
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The Pico OWC – a status outline
The wave energy pilot plant on the Island of Pico/Azores, based on the Oscillating Water Column Technology (OWC), was conceived in the nineties by researchers at IST (Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon), and built with the collaboration of the companies Profabril, PROET (EDP group), A.R.T. and Efacec by 1998. The total cost of the plant design and construction (including R&D) was approximately 4 M€, being equally shared by European Commission, the Portuguese state, EDP and EDA (Azores utility). After the initial commissioning of trials in 1999, accidents and lack of resources led to destruction, re-installation and ultimately degradation of the first grid-connected European wave energy pilot plant, without having operated over significant periods.
The 400kW plant was owned until 2003/04 by EDA, who transferred the responsibility to the newly created Wave Energy Centre (WavEC). Almost simultaneously, a recovery project involving Portuguese public funds (600k€) and private investment from WavEC associates in the same order of magnitude was initiated.
The plant was successfully refurbished and has operated on a regular basis since late 2006, however with strong limitations due to original design and installation errors. Nevertheless the conditions have consistently been improved, albeit the minimalist resources of WavEC, and with the technical collaboration of Kymaner it is now possible to run the OWC at its rated speed.
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