HERO WEC Mission Status Update – Belt Testing (Text Version)

This is the text version of the video HERO WEC Mission Status Update – Belt Testing.

[Music playing]

[Text on screen: HERO WEC Mission Status Update Belt Testing, logo for NREL]

>> Justin Panzarella, Researcher, NREL: I'm Justin Panzarella, and I'm a mechanical engineering researcher at NREL. So, currently we're testing a polyurethane flat belt as potential replacement for our mooring line. The original mooring line was a 5/16th-inch-diameter stainless steel wire rope, so we're hoping that by going to a thinner polyurethane flat belt, we'll be able to greatly extend the number of bending cycles. In that case, the belt would be a critical step in achieving our 6-month deployment goal as opposed to the 1-to-2-week deployments that we've had previously.

What excites me about this work is that we're performing research into an area where there is very little existing research. So, I'm very passionate about being able to test individual components—for example, the belt—in an application which it was never designed for. This will definitely have impacts on what Version 2 of the HERO WEC looks like. We can learn a lot about marine energy from these tests.

So, our next steps will be to process and analyze all the data that we collect from this round of testing, and then make a decision on if the belt is going to be our mooring line for HERO WEC Version 2.

[Text on screen: Visit nrel.gov/water/desalination to stay updated on the progress of HERO WEC 2.0, logo for NREL.]

[End of audio]