PacWave (Newport, OR)

Following the San Diego open-ocean pilot, CalWave plans to prepare for deployment of our x100™ unit, ranking 100kW of power, at PacWave. PacWave will be the first federally-approved, commercial-scale, utility grid-connected wave energy site in the United States.

Credit: US Department of Energy

2021 Open-Ocean Pilot (San Diego, CA)

On September 16th, 2021, CalWave successfully commissioned California’s first at-sea, long-duration wave energy pilot. The x1™ pilot unit, a scaled representation of CalWave’s x100™ architecture, was deployed off the coast of San Diego, 1,800 feet from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography research pier. This project was supported by a U.S. Department of Energy award with the goal of validating the performance and reliability of our fully autonomous, submerged xWave system in open-ocean. All pilot objectives were achieved as our demonstration ran continuously for 10 months with zero intervention and 99% system uptime, and was recovered in July 2021.

Key partners for this project include the U.S. Department of Energy, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, DNV GL, and UC Berkeley. Additionally, CalWave is collaborating with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Integral Consulting, Inc. to collect empirical data and monitor marine ecosystem acceptability of the WEC.

Findings will inform CalWave’s next grid-connected deployment, scheduled to occur at the federally-approved PacWave wave energy site currently being built off the coast of Newport, Oregon.