HERO WEC: The Tech Turning Wild Wave Power Into Usable Energy (Text Version)

This is the text version of the video HERO WEC: The Tech Turning Wild Wave Power Into Usable Energy.

In this mission status update series, look behind the scenes at our Hydraulic and Electric Reverse Osmosis Wave Energy Converter (HERO WEC) as it undergoes upgrades. This update with researcher Alec Schnabel focuses on designing, building, and testing a custom charge controller that is meant for wave energy.

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[Text on screen: HERO WEC Mission Status Update Charge Controller Testing]

>>Alex Schnabel, Marine Energy Researcher, National Laboratory of the Rockies: My name is Alex Schnabel. I'm with the Marine Energy Water Power Group here at NLR, and I'm a marine energy researcher.

The charge controller is exactly as it sounds. It controls the charge to the battery.

So as the waves come in, they pulse, they move, energy goes from peak to zero. It's a very, what we call, wild power.

And so, what the charge controller does is it takes that power and smooths it out for the battery to use, because batteries are very particular in what they can accept, the currents, and the voltage levels.

So it is that critical piece that converts wild power to smooth power.

Once we had a reasonable understanding of what topologies may work, it was done in what's called power-hardware-in-the-loop testing.

What that means is we have a simulated power system that was paired with a power amplifier, which takes the signals from the real-time simulation, amplifies it to work with our HERO WEC generator.

And the next stage of testing is, again, power-hardware-in-the-loop testing.

But instead of the hardware being simulated, it's the rest of the system. So, the battery system, the pumps, etc.

And now we're seeing how the hardware responds to actual higher voltage from the generator and higher voltage from the emulated battery.

Previous deployments, we were leaving a lot of power on the table, so to speak.

And so, this new one will have a completely different topology that has a much lower cut in power, or a cut in voltage, more specifically.

And we have control of the software, the firmware, the algorithms that dictate what it does.

And so, a couple of things I just want to see from the new charge controller is better performance out at sea.

And also, I just want to see other people use it and other people improve upon my own control algorithms and improve upon what we've done here.

[Text on screen: National Laboratory of the Rockies nlr.gov/water/desalination]

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