Agenda Session

Offshore electricity generation is valuable to power monitoring equipment and recharge autonomous underwater vehicle batteries. Traditional methods of offshore electricity generation depend on buoys with surface expressions to generate electricity from waves or solar panels. Ocean currents provide an alternate source of offshore energy, but they are often too slow for electricity production from traditional turbines. Here we present a novel offshore electricity production device that generates electricity from currents as slow as 0.5 m/s by utilizing vortex induced vibration. The device was field tested over a range of current speeds from 0 to 1.8 m/s.  It produced electricity that charged a battery during the month-long test.  Electricity was produced by a pendulum transmission system manufactured by WITT energy that was mounted on top of a plastic pipe and secured to the seafloor. The WITT pendulum system is a unique patented device that allows the pendulums to rotate around all three axes to generate electricity from motion in any direction. It is completely enclosed without any external moving parts that would be subjected to the harsh ocean environment. Future research will optimize the power take-off electronics and device dimensions to maximize power production. Power production from vortex induced vibration devices will enable future offshore electricity generation in areas of the ocean where current technologies have relied only on batteries.