HydroWing Technology
Our HydroWing tidal device is designed to tackle the challenges that have hindered the industrialisation of the tidal sector to date.
Our patent pending solution incorporates a full system approach integrating installation, operations and maintenance at the core of the design in order to reduce operating costs.
Tidal Challenges
The tidal industry has struggled to drive down its Levelized Cost of Energy since its birth over a decade ago, preventing it from becoming competitive and thriving within the renewable energy market. The two main issues lie in turbines complexity and reliability and expensive offshore maintenance.
The engineering drive to optimise energy extraction has led to many developers employing complex systems to increase output which has seen them encounter issues with device reliability. Reduced reliability results in increased down time and loss of revenue. To add to these associated costs the requirement of large and specialised vessels has incurred cripplingly high costs on developers.
HydroWing's Solution
The HydroWing solution combats these issues via a holistic and simplistic approach which reduces the cost, improves reliability and time and effort of O&M.
The HydroWing consists of two main components.
1 x Permanent Gravity Based Structure
1 - 3 x Retrievable wings with 3-5 small turbines (50 - 400kW each)
This simple arrangement enables reduced CapEx and reliable power generation through:
Reduced cost and greater reliability of non-yawing and bi-directional turbines
Turbines constructed from reliable of the shelf components enabling wide supply chain and reduced lead times to be accessed
Multiple turbines enable maintained power production in the event of individual failure
Support structure constructed from standard cross sections
Smaller turbines (5-10m diameter), reduce wake effects enabling increased power density and revenue potential of sites
Small turbines distribute loads evenly through support structure prolonging fatigue life
Single export cable for each a single HydroWing structure
O&M Procedure
The retrievable wing arrangement creates, low weight modular generating capacity enabling significantly reduced Installation and O&M cost over device life. O&M of turbines consists of simple process:
1 - Barge vessel with simple twin davit lifting arrangement arrive at site with LARS
3 - LARS hydraulically engages with wing and wet mate connections released as lifted
2 - LARS lowered down to HydroWIng using in built cameras and guidance systems
4 - LARS and wing returned to surface for infield maintenance or return to port
This procedure for installation and O&M has been central to HydroWing design to ensures accessibility, reliability and availability of the HydroWing to bring about significant lifetime cost reductions through:
Modular design enables standard shipment of all components
Utilisation of low-cost barges
Simple, low weightlifting arrangement that can be retrofitted to hired barges
Maximised power availability due to rapid response times of readily available maintenance vessels
Staggered wings enabling unobstructed access to each wing in all configurations
LARS eliminating necessity for expensive and cumbersome ROV
All turbine electronic components accessible in single location for infield maintenance
Wet mate connected stab plates enabling recovery and reinstallation procedure to be complete in a single slack tide
HydroWing Ambition
Scalability is paramount to the success of tidal energy technology enabling the ability to cost effectively meet the requirements of the customer and have access to economies of scale.
The HydroWing has been designed to accommodate such scalability and our team is developing a suite of HydroWing devices to achieve this, bring the tidal sector into the mainstream utility scale renewable energy generation across the globe and reach like to like competitiveness to offshore wind and nuclear over the coming years.
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HydroWing ambition is to realise this suite of devices being deployed in multiple projects across the world in the coming 5 years. Kickstarting 2021 HydroWing will deploy its first demonstration scale 300kw device at EMEC under the Interreg OceanDemo project. To support the accelerated development and demonstration of HydroWing technology we look to launch a crowdfunding campaign later this year to allow you to support and join us on this journey to cost competitive, reliable and easy to manage tidal energy production.
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