A Sea Change for Ocean Power

The oceans are becoming more important to our energy supply. They provide a lot of benefits for generating energy, while offering a similar amount of challenges. However, if we could take advantage of the renewable power in the 70% of the earth that the oceans cover, it could easily take care of all of our energy needs. Winds on the deep ocean are faster and stronger, and according to one piece of research, can exceed power generation on land by a factor of three or more. Wave power also allows us to capture energy that is predictable, and tidal power offers a constant source of power, with no downtime. As well as offering better performance than land-based renewables, all of these techniques do not take up precious land area that can be used for building houses or growing food. However, as with land-based renewables, one of the main drawbacks for ocean-based sources is the storage of energy, especially when that energy generation is intermittent.

Looking at a solution for storage for ocean-based wind turbines, one company has taken the principles of hydroelectric storage and used it to design a storage system that can be deployed close to where ocean energy is generated. To store energy, the system pumps water from the rigid reservoirs into the flexible bladders on the seabed. Now the energy is stored as potential energy in the form of water under high pressure. When there is demand for power, water flows back from the flexible bladders to the low pressure rigid reservoirs. Driving multiple hydro turbines to generate electricity.. The ocean battery has been developed by Ocean Grazer, a spin-off from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. The team is currently developing a commercial demonstrator to show that the ocean battery is capable of stabilizing the power system and providing power whenever a blackout occurs.. The ocean battery is intended to provide energy storage capacity that is scalable to GW/h scale, is efficient and has low maintenance costs. The solution is based on proprietary technology and has been designed to solve the challenge of balancing supply and demand for the e-power industry, while providing access to renewable power generation without destabilizing the power grid.