Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), in collaboration with the Polytechnic Univeristy of Turin, has developed PEWEC wave energy converter.
PEWEC (Pendulum Wave Energy Converter) is a floating, raft-resembling device that can be positioned offshore, and that relies on the hull oscillation induced by waves for electricity production.
According to ENEA, the technology has a low environmental and visual impact, a lower daily variability and a favorable season variation, since wave energy potential is higher in winter, when energy consumption is at its maximum.
Gianmaria Sannino , Head of the ENEA Climate Modelling and Impacts Laboratory, said: “The device allows to harvest clean, renewable, low-cost energy from the sea. The Italian islands, powered by expensive and polluting diesel plants, are the ideal candidate for this new technology.
“The National Action Plan for Renewable Energy envisages the installation of a number of such devices with an energy output of 3 MW by 2020.
“The Italian wave energy potential is comparable to that of the east coast of the North Sea, since the average offshore wave power of the north-west of Sardinia is 13 kW/m and that of the north-west of Sicily is 10 kW/m.”
ENEA has also drawn up the “The Mediterranean Wave Energy Atlas”, a map of the areas presenting the best characteristics for sea energy production, containing all the useful data for the estimation of wave energy and the identification of the more apt technologies, specifically: speed of currents, height of waves, and intensity of tides.
According to ENEA, the Agency has developed an operating system for sea state prediction up to five days, able to estimate the quantity of energy to feed into the electrical grid to an accuracy of a few hundred meters.
Images: ENEA