The Water Power Technologies Office of the US Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy announced that Sandia National Laboratories, in partnership with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, is working to develop a wave energy converter (WEC) that can support the Coastal Pioneer Array, one of five arrays that make up the U.S. National Science Foundation Ocean Observatories Initiative.

The WEC will serve the Coastal Surfacing Mooring (CSM) system, which currently relies on solar, wind, and battery systems to power multiple sensors on the buoy itself and along the mooring line. These existing energy resources meet the system’s full power demand about 70% of the time. To satisfy the full power demand 100% of the time and prevent interruptions to data streams, Sandia has been investigating designs for WECs that could provide additional electrical power to the CSM.

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