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OWECO Ocean Wave Energy Company is developing an OWEC Ocean Wave Energy Converter® through an active research program. The technology was conceived while the inventor was an undergraduate architecture student with growing interest in industrial design. As participant in a studio, "Ocean Habitat", having primary design focus on living and research spaces at water's edge, on the ocean hydroface, or in subsurface environs, the inventor made many sketches of rather organic nature including "research spheres" arranged in such configuration to resemble the general shape of octopi. The spherical bodies were to be interconnected by idealized tensile materials, analogous to muscle tissue, that electrochemically contract or expand to raise or lower spheres to particular ocean depths of research interest. While technologically unfeasible in 1978, further exploration disclosed the nature of water waves and, particularly, attenuation of water particle motion correspondent to depth. Neutral buoyancy concepts embellished the design approach. Consideration of relative distance between two spherical buoys, with one floating on hydroface and the other suspended at essentially undisturbed strata, revealed significant change from effective wave motion. Table tennis ball and wire sketch models were fabricated and tested in water filled wastebaskets. Simple beginnings led to preliminary design drawings of the first thus termed OWEC Ocean Wave Energy Converter®. Within one week of OWEC® conception, adverse effects of petroleum combustion caused the death of a companion and extreme illness to the inventor. During recovery, a special study program permitted fervent development of viable OWEC® technology leading to a first U.S. Patent 4,232,230. Ocean Wave Energy Company experimented with linear electrical generator and rectifier designs, construction materials, and wave tank tests of three working models and buoy shapes. Examination of OWEC® Ocean Wave Energy Converter® operation elucidated further comprehensive design requirements for invention research that culminated in second U.S. Patent 4,672,222 authored and prosecuted by the inventor.

OWECO successfully completed bench top trials with full size components under a Small Business Innovation Research contract from the United States Coast Guard. Tests rendered power points used to refine the engineering program for this technology. The program describes virtually all ranges of wave energy input, module sizes, and resulting electrical energy. Pending breadboard and sea trial data results verify and raise program accuracy. Then the program will be a most important tool for system modeling, prototype design, manufacturing standards, and process control of viable technology. Ongoing examination of other proposed conversion methods confirms that modular small scale point absorbers have most advantageous qualities within real wave environments of wide energy bandwidth and diffuse nature. The inventor's quest is to formulate non-polluting electrical generation means for producing recyclable hydrogen fuel devoid of harmful carbon monoxide toxins.

OWEC Ocean Wave Energy Converter® applies to several conventional and emerging technologies. Thus, commercial use of wide range and utility may be successfully promoted. Intensifying electrical demand is predicted, initially with small-scale use, for assisting or replacing prime charging sources of United States Coast Guard (USCG) discrete marine aids to navigation audiovisual signaling, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) environmental monitoring data acquisition instrumentation, or like installations requiring in situ electrical power supply. Autonomous systems and techniques are needed to supplant present electrical generation methods that are dependent upon regeneration from land-based sources. The practice of using non-renewable fuel or battery powered equipment, for example, can require a user to execute repeated service and component replacement operations during a performance period. While solar panels have been phased in to account for more specialized requirements, clouding and salt deposition effects remain problematic over large scale deployment. The frequency of costly maintenance procedures is extensively reduced when utilizing indigenous power supply of an efficient apparatus for converting the hydrokinetic energy of water wave fluctuations to electrical energy. Power supply for wider commercialization supports resource exploration, recovery, and processing facilities in diverse fields such as oil, gas, mineral, fishery, and aquaculture. It will be a key enabling technology in the development of marginal offshore oilfields with power deficient platforms. Imminently expansive deployment of vast OWEC® installations is envisioned to capacitate industrial activities that harmoniously utilize bounty of the world's oceans as related to a broad desire for environmentally compatible and cyclable fuel. Once deployed, wave energy conversion apparati require no fuel or emissions retrofit. No hydrocarbon, particulates, CO, SO2, or Nox air pollutant waste streams are generated. Far reaching OWEC Ocean Wave Energy Converter® implementation is anticipated to symbiotically function as macro electrolyzers and aerohydrators of the hydrologic cycle. Impending critical needs will be satiated by very large-scale desalination operations for potable water purification and very large-scale electrolysis operations for hydrogen gas production from seawater.

Ocean Wave Energy Company is located in a Bristol, Rhode Island marine complex having shorefront access to substantial piers and docks. It is poised to construct several full scale Ocean Wave Energy Converters for sea trials. OWECO recommends alliances of technical aid, materials, parts providers, and funding sources to continue the mission. The Company received a Small Business Innovation Research contract award, an Energy Innovation Award from the Governor of Rhode Island, U.S Patent 4,232,230, U.S. Patent 4,672,222, other Patents Applied For, and multimedia publicity. Portions of an OWEC Ocean Wave Energy Converter® treatise are being released at www.owec.com, www.owec.net, and www.owec.org. Your correspondence is encouraged or call 401-253-4488 (USA). Thank you for visiting Ocean Wave Energy Company. Please link to sites reporting wave activity around the world, the National Hydrogen Association, an OWEC® Discussion Forum, or explore the ideas of R. Buckminster Fuller.

- Ocean Wave Energy Company -