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BioPower Systems, Wave Energy Company Forms Partnership With Large Chinese Industrial Group
The wave energy company BioPower Systems recently announced that it was forming a new strategic alliance with Shanghai Electric Power Generation Group, a major Chinese industrial group. This collaboration is aiming at advancing the development of the bioWAVE ocean wave energy system to the production stage.
Dr Timothy Finnigan, the CEO of BioPower Systems, said:
“It will be necessary for ocean energy systems to be both substantial in scale and technically sophisticated, in order to become cost competitive.
“This alliance, between BioPower Systems and what is one of the largest diversified equipment manufacturing groups in China, intends to enable development of the bioWAVE to a commercial stage within a reasonable time frame.”
Just a few months ago, the Australian Government provided a large funding contribution of $5.6 million to BioPower Systems to help support the 250kW bioWAVE pilot demonstration project at Port Fairy, Victoria. This was in addition to the $5 million grant provided by the Victorian Government’s Sustainable Energy Pilot Demonstration program.
The pilot demonstration project, designed to showcase the bioWAVE technology, is nearing its construction stage. Planned at an ocean site roughly 850 metres from shore in water about 30 meters deep, the electricity generated will be delivered to the national grid by a subsea cable. Current plans have the construction scheduled to begin during late 2013.
This pilot demonstration is following on the heels of 6 years of research and development; during which BioPower Systems created its O-Drive 250kW module, designed to harvest wave and tidal energy systems.
Shanghai Electric is going to be acting solely as an observer during the pilot demonstration, and then will become much more involved as they move on to commercialization, which, according to current plans, includes the development and operation of a 1MW commercial-scale bioWAVE system.
Source: BioPower Systems [PDF]
2012-10-16 03:01:43
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