News from Jamie Taylor, Research Fellow, Wave Power Group, Edinburgh, Scotland.
The Edinburgh wide tank has now closed but I am pleased to announce that we have now secured finance (circa £160k) to construct a new tank which will re-use much of the wave-making system from the wide tank.
The wide tank was in use until the 30th of July with Ocean Power Delivery Ltd testing their 1/30th scale Pelamis model. With their much appreciated help we had removed all wavemaking equipment from the tank by the 10th of August and it is all now carefully stowed away.
We designed the wide tank in 1977 for testing models of a 2GW string of 'Ducks'. It gave us a scaled down area of ocean of about 3km wide and nearly 1km long.
The new tank is designed principally for testing models of solo devices (such as the Sloped IPS Buoy that we are currently working on) so it can be smaller than the wide tank. It will also have space for 'downwave' devices such as Pelamis. We are aiming to have even better wave conditions than in the wide tank with a relatively larger area given over to beaches and a planform which discourages crosswaves and seiches. The new tank is mainly funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), with a contribution by the University of Edinburgh. We hope to have it filled by Christmas of this year and we look forward to again being able to welcome other device teams to Scotland.
Further details on Edinburgh University Wave Energy Group: www.mech.ed.ac.uk/research/wavepower/