The Michigan Engineer News Center

Professor Scruggs is developing advanced components for wave and tidal energy systems

Civil and Environmental Engineering
August 7, 2015
The Energy Department recently selected four entities to receive $7.4 million to spur innovation of next-generation water power component technologies, designed for manufacturability and built specifically for marine and hydrokinetic (MHK) systems.| Short Read

Associate Professor Jeff Scruggs is a participant in one of the projects. This project, which focuses on advanced controls, will develop an optimal control system that predicts ocean conditions and adjusts device settings accordingly to optimize power production for three different wave energy converter (WEC) devices:

(1) the OE buoy developed by Ocean Energy USA

(2) the Surge WEC device developed by Resolute Marine Energy, and

(3) the Wave Carpet developed at CalWave (UC Berkeley).

Device performance improvements will be validated through wave-tank testing and one final full-scale test.

To read more, please visit energy.gov.

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