AquaBuoy Sinks
Just hours before its scheduled removal, AquaBuOY 2.0 has sunk.
“For the purpose of the project, it was highly successful.” Kevin Bannister, VP for Business Development, Finavera Renewables
Finavera Renewable’s 72-foot high wave energy test buoy went down in about 115 feet of water on Oct. 27, just one day before it was to be removed from its location in the waters off of Lincoln County, a part of the Central Oregon Coast. The device had been deployed on September 6.
While company officials say they don’t know exactly why it sunk, Finavera Renewable’s spokesman Mike Clark said, “It seems to have something to do with the float section of the device.” He said the buoy began taking on water and the bilge pump “couldn’t keep up with the amount of water it was taking on.” The pump failed and the device went down. “We’re pretty sure it didn’t have anything to do with the power-generating technology,” Clark said.
On what planet can an expensive prototype device sinking be called highly succesful!!??
The planet where the company is publicly traded and doesn’t want its stock to tank. We tend to agree that if the prototype fails 2/3 of the way through the testing cycle, that’s not a good sign. However, we don’t believe that invalidates harvest of kinetic energy from waves, perhaps just this incarnation of the harvest device.
Remember, we do often learn more from catastrophic failure than we do from success when learning something new.
I feel that if they have gotten good data from the test prototype then it was a success. The area that they tested the bouy in is some very nasty water. If this company is not a boat or nauticale products manufacture it problably is learning a very valuable lesson concerning the power of the ocean. Lets wait and see if the next prototype does better. the theroy is good and the power could be as close to free as it could get and there are few days that you would get a perfectly calm day.
Lin