New Thinking Required for Ocean Current Technologies
If you have innovative ideas about generating electricity from ocean currents there’s still time to enter the TIA-Eskom Open Innovation Challenge. The submission deadline has been extended until July 15th owing to higher than anticipated response levels.
The Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) and South African state-owned power utility Eskom are inviting ideas from inventors, researchers, entrepreneurs and companies for “proven-concept, commercially viable, ocean-current energy-producing technologies”.
South Africa has a long coastline and powerful currents, making it an ideal place to research and develop renewable marine energy as an economically viable prospect.
For example, the Agulhas current along the Indian Ocean coast is one of the strongest on the planet, and according to TIA researchers has the capacity to produce 42 GW of electricity.
Following the new deadline TIA will spend around two months analysing submissions, anticipating that a small handfdul will go through to the second phase.
This next stage will see participants scale their proof of concepts up to commercialization over the following two years.
Meeting the Challenges
There are many reasons why ocean current energy technologies have lagged behind other renewables in recent years, and these include prohibitive costs and the technical challenges posed by marine conditions.
This new open innovation initiative hopes to breathe new life into the field and encourage new ways of thinking in an attempt to meet the growing demand for renewable sources of energy.
The Technical Bits
“TIA expects the submitted technologies to meet the agency’s aspiration of a 60% to 90% electrically efficient 1.5 kW to 50 kW unit based at a water depth of between 20 m and 2 000 m and within 1 km to 20 km of a shore grid connection. The unit is also expected to operate at a current speed of 1 m/s to 4 m/s”.
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