HERO WEC Mission Status Update: Wave Tank Testing (Text Version)

This is the text version of the video HERO WEC Mission Status Update: Wave Tank Testing.

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

>>Scott Jenne, Researcher, NREL: My name's Scott Jenne. I'm a research engineer and project lead for the HERO WEC team. Today we're doing preliminary hydrodynamic testing. And so, the objective of this is to really make sure that our numerical models—or simulations, if you will—are aligned well with the physical system.

>>Thanh Toan Tran, Researcher, NREL: My name is Thanh Toan Tran. People call me Toan for short. I'm a research engineer in the water power group. Mostly, I'm working on the numerical simulation. And with the HERO WEC project, I'm really excited to work on the real tank testing, which is I can physically observe how the HERO WEC behaves in the control wave environment.

What we want to get out from the tank testing is to have the load prediction, the WEC motion, WEC velocity, and use that output from the tank testing to further validate the numerical models using the linear model, like WEC-Sim team and the high-fidelity CFD model.

This is a controlled environment. We can make sure that every setup in the tank testing, we know exactly what the inputs look like, so that we can do a better job on the numerical simulation, which is the same kind of input. This is really a critical step to actually advance the marine energy space. It can provide the public the data for the whole community, especially in the wave-powered desal system.

>>Jenne: So now that we've had this testing done, we're going to go back, we're going to revisit our numerical models, or simulations. And we’re going to then start really digging into the mechanical design of the system.

So, what is the actual drivetrain going to look like? What gearbox are we going to select, you know, what pump and generator, those types of things. And we'll really start putting this all together and actually start building this probably late this summer.

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

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