Following on from the disappointment of not receiving any tier 3 funding from Wave Energy Scotland in early 2020 we decided to continue the development without external assistance—a far longer journey.
The R&D involved has allowed us to redefine Anaconda and following on from this work in house, we asked well known Marine Energy consultants Wave-Venture to validate and review our work using their FlexWEC software. FlexWEC is a general purpose software for hydrodynamic analysis of flexible WEC devices and other marine structures. http://www.wave-venture.com/
The report is very encouraging, and the positive results of the Wave Venture engineering and mathematical modelling has re-energised our efforts and consequently we have committed to a programme of further wave tank tests, these are due to take place later this year whilst scale models are built.
A further patent application has been lodged to protect our work which continues to use bulge wave technology but instead of relying solely upon the external tube distensibility the exciting step forward has been to create distensibility inside the tube, the resulting reduction in the material cost is dramatic reducing the predicted cost of energy by a staggering amount.
Clearly more work is required and the wave tank testing is one part of that ongoing programme.
Further updates will follow in due course.