PhD scholarship focused on Crestwing’s wave energy technology

The Centre for Energy Technologies at Aarhus University has invited applications for PhD scholarship. Particularly, devoted to the techno-economic assessment of the overall performance of Crestwing’s wave energy technology.

Concept

Centre for Energy Technologies at Aarhus University has joined forces with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Technical University Denmark (DTU), Harvard University, and Atmosphere/Energy at Stanford University in order to further investigate the potential of wave energy.

The three-year project, received approval for DKK 6.2 million (a little over €830,000) grant by Danish Independent Research Fund. Specifically, it will streamline the existing Crestwing’s wave energy plant in order to; improve its hydrodynamic properties as well as production costs, operation, and maintenance.

Scope

In this regard, a PhD scholarship at Aarhus University is open to conduct the validation of the wave energy plant’s performance, based on the existing design and improvements provided by the DTU. 

Also, a scale-up simulation of tests will take place to determine the new power curve for the plant after the modified design.

Simultaneously, metocean data will be prepared for four test locations in Northern Europe as well.

Based on the new plant design inputs from DTU, a breakdown of the components and materials will go down. Moreover, an estimation of cost numbers for each component. Hence, revealing not only the plant CAPEX but also the environmental footprint for the system.

Following the insights from the preliminary studies, this activity will estimate the LCoE for the four test locations.

The work will also determine the LCoE impact of the improved plant design proposed by DTU. Thus, the PhD scholarship will include hydrodynamic analysis using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Note that the analysis will progress in collaboration with Harvard University.

The deadline for applications to the scholarship is for March 4, 2022, so hurry up.

The news follows a technical report released by the Denmark-based multidisciplinary engineering consultancy NIRAS which analyzed Crestwing’s wave energy concept.

NIRAS’ identified the potential for efficiency improvements in converting wave energy to electricity. In the meantime, confirming the concept’s ability to withstand the marine environment without significant wear or damage.

Source: Aarhus BSS