The Project
- Details
- Category: Tuvalu
High efficiency power generation system, using the waves of the sea by a float.
In the first phase, a first prototype designed at the Industrial Equipment Design Center of the Technical University of Catalonian (CDEI-UPC) was built.
Later tests were carried out at the Marine Engineering Laboratory (LIM) of the same university which has an artificial channel that creates waves of different types. This helped us to verify the operation of the physic principle and the system’s viability, as well as to analyse the system’s outputs.
Once the tests were realized, some members of the CDEI engineer team were incorporated to Corporación Capricornio to continue with the development of the system
For this first phase, we had the support of the Spanish government: CDTI (Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico Industrial), IDEA (Instituto para la Diversificación y Ahorro de Energía), etc; the Catalan government: CIDEM (Centre d'Innovació i Desenvolupament Empresarial), ICAEN (Institut Català d’Energia); as well as research and development organizations and companies such as Innova, UPC, etc.
An awarded project
From the 5th to the 8th of September 2002, the IX International Fair of Inventions and New Patents GALACTICA 2002 was held in Vilanova i la Geltrú. These days, Vilanova i la Geltrú was once again the European capital for inventions with around 200 innovations from all around Spain and abroad. The company ARLAST INVEST exhibited its project in the CDEI-UPC stand, showing the first prototype at a reduced scale of the system which was designed and developed at the CDEI-UPC and was tested at the Marine Engineering Laboratory. The project was awarded the 2002 International Inventiveness First Prize and the Special Prize of the City Council of Vilanova i la Geltrú.
In view of the results obtained in this first phase (Médol), improvements in the initial design were made and a second TUVALU prototype at a scale of 1:8 was built
Once again this prototype was empirically studied analysing the results obtained in a series of tests at the LIM channel.
Next, we can see real data obtained from the system: generated power mean and output mean:
In view of the results registered, we decided to move forward the third phase of the project: the manufacture of the TUVALU prototype at a scale of 1:2
