Hi Mega, your series of posts just now has piqued my interest in relation to something that I have been curious about for a long while so will throw it out there for comment.
I haven't read much here from posters about the design methodology and actual system change from Ceto 5 to Ceto 6 and as to why this has occurred.
Now, I don't hold, but still hold a few POW, and a similar change there some time back from locating onshore power takeoff equipment to within the buoy (Ceto 6) or close by to buoys (as with recent iterations of Protean) has occurred, and my theory is that it relates in part to Bernoulli's principle - that is effectively if you have to move a piped fluid (for kinetic energy use) it requires more and more energy over greater distances. This is because as I understand it, as fluid flow speed increases, pressure reduces - so the fluid inertia (power) to drive an onshore electrical converter or desal device, over longer distances is not as effective.
Therefore, whether the WEC is Ceto based, Protean, or any other method, energy losses over those distances make it increasingly inefficient.
So, that said, I am curious as to why when the Ceto designers decided not only to house the PTO internally (to overcome this problem), they also decided to make the buoy substantially bigger.
It seems to me (this is only my opinion) that if Ceto can be successfully deployed in a wave farm some time, that there will only be at most one or a small number of buoys in operation to service that area - and so doesn't this increase your risks - as in, if one buoy is underperforming, or faulty that has to be immediately addressed, as opposed to a multiple buoy farm of smaller simpler units (like the Seabased one someone put forward recently), where each unit can be easily repaired/replaced if underperforming - and potentially without any downtime effect on the overall farm.
Plus the larger the buoy, the deeper the water in which it has to reside, and distance back to shore also increases - which also makes maintenance more costly potentially.
Anyway, just my thoughts, and they may well be on top of this technically - I just have the view that if anyone is to crack the wave environment successfully, then the system has to be simple, highly adaptive, and easy to deploy and repair - even be easily movable (please don't misunderstand - not directly comparing Protean here), I mean so that you have the capability to modify the farm's unit distribution at will if needed to harvest wave energy optimally in any given setting.
I say that because a number of on-shore new technologies (includes microgrids, desal, wastewater treatment etc.) around the world are moving to a mobile method - housed in shipping containers, and this allows them greater flexibility and not fixed in location.
Cheers and good luck to all with this recent new focus. BC
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