Wave Energy Scotland awards £1m for advanced control systems

The projects aim to significantly reduce the cost of generating electricity by increasing the amount of wave devices can capture

Funding worth nearly £1 million is being awarded for the development of advanced control systems for wave energy devices.

Wave Energy Scotland (WES) is providing the grant to two projects that aim to significantly reduce the cost of generating electricity by increasing the amount of energy they can capture.

MaxSim and Queen Mary University, which are leading the two projects, will demonstrate the control systems in wave tanks in Scotland such as the FloWave facility in Edinburgh.

The first project aims to use reinforcement learning to study good control policies for several classes of wave energy converters (WECs) while the second project aims to contribute a technology that allows significant reduction in the life installed capacity cost of WECs.

The latest funding brings the total amount invested by WES in wave energy projects to £39.6 million.

Tim Hurst, Managing Director of WES said: “I’m delighted to see these projects going into stage three to conduct a physical demonstration of their advanced control system concepts. Both offer promising solutions to managing the efficiency and safety of wave energy converters.”

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