OPT sees interest for its Underwater Substation Pod
Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) has highlighted the utility of an underwater substation device. The Pennington, New Jersey-based company says such device is often “overlooked”.
The company has developed an innovative Underwater Substation Pod (USP) as an environmentally responsible means of networking and transmitting offshore power and data to onshore electric utility grids. It can aggregate up to 10 offshore power generation devices into one common interconnection point (e.g. wave, tidal and offshore wind) for economic, undersea power transformation and data communication.
It also provides a full suite of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) capabilities, and allows the operator to remotely control electrical safety equipment.
OPT says it has created considerable intellectual property with the development of its unique pod, and as a result is attracting interest from industry players responsible application in other wave, offshore wind and tidal projects.
During the first quarter, (ended July 31), the company made progress on the manufacturing of an underwater substation pod, under contract with Iberdrola. The current phase of the contract includes building and testing the pod for use in a utility-grade OPT wave power station expected to be built at a site approximately three miles off the coast of Santoña, Spain. This device is expected to be ready for in-waterdockside testing in the coming weeks.
via OPT sees interest for its Underwater Substation Pod | tidal today.