• Ocean tank,
  • M.R.E.,

New testing in the Centrale Nantes Ocean Tank

Mocean Energy is a fast-growing company based in Edinburgh researching ocean wave energy. Mocean is developing wave energy converters – WECs – machines that convert the mechanical energy of ocean waves into electricity.

on September 18, 2019

Mocean are currently constructing a 30-tonne half-scale prototype of its Blue Horizon WEC, due to be launched early 2020 and tested at sea in Orkney, Scotland.

Mocean are also developing a smaller WEC, to be used to supply power at sea for offshore installations; a 1/10th scale mode of it has been tested in the Hydrodynamic and Ocean Engineering Tank at Centrale Nantes. 

Chris Retzler, Mocean founder and technical director, explained:
We came here because it’s one of the finest facilities in Europe – here we can accurately and realistically simulate the sea conditions we need.  This allows us to validate the performance of our WEC, so we can then confidently predict its power production in real ocean waves.  We can also test it in very large waves, so we can assess its ability to survive extreme conditions.

This test in the Hydrodynamic and Ocean Engineering Tank was supported by the Marinet programme, funded by the European Union, which supports access for researchers to test facilities across Europe.


 
Published on September 17, 2019 Updated on July 4, 2022