H2020 OPERA Project - Mutriku database

Open Sea Operating Experience to Reduce Wave Energy Cost

As part of the OPERA H2020 project, the Mutriku Wave Power Plant is being used as a real condition laboratory for the experiment of innovative technologies. The plant is situated in the North shore of Spain and has been operating since 2011. It uses the Oscillating Water Column (OWC) principle, which consists of compressing and expanding the air trapped in a chamber due to the inner free-surface oscillation resulting from the incident waves. The pressure difference between the air chamber and the atmosphere is used to drive an air turbine. In that case, a self-rectifying air turbine is the best candidate for the energy conversion, as it produces a unidirectional torque in the presence of a bi-directional flow. The power take-off system installed is composed of a biradial turbine connected to a 30kW off-the-shelf squirrel cage generator. One of the novelties of the turbine is a high-speed stop valve installed close to the rotor.

This repository publishes the biradial turbine operating data collected at the Mutriku wave power plant from July 2017 to June 2018 within the framework of WP4.

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 654.444