How cool would it be to harness the vast renewable energy of ocean waves and use it to power homes, recharge electric vehicles, and help eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels? That's exactly what Marcus Lehmann (CEO) and Thomas Boerner (CTO), along their team at CalWave Power Technologies, are working to solve.
This start-up, coming out of the University of California at Berkeley, created an innovative Wave Energy Converter (WEC) that is inspired by the ability of a muddy seafloor to completely absorb the energy of passing waves. Waves seem to “disappear” when traveling over a muddy seafloor because the wave energy is dissipated, as the mud moves with and resists the motion of the wave.
CalWave Power Technologies recently took their WEC and competed (along with 92 other teams) in the Department of Energy (DOE) Wave Energy Prize. As a result, they won the Second Place Prize and $500,000 USD to further develop their technology.
Some highlights of this project are:
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Developed the system in just 4 months
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Exceeded the DOE’s goal of cost-efficient wave energy extraction by factor of 3.6x.
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Earned second place and $500,000 in seed money at the DOE’s Wave Energy Prize competition
Read the full case study about how CalWave and JKI used LabVIEW, the JKI State Machine, and NI data acquisition hardware to control their system and win at the competition.
Did you find this interesting? Check out our post about Grid-Scale Energy Storage Powered by LabVIEW.
Would you like to learn how JKI can help you get your prototype to market fast using LabVIEW? Send us an email.
