Wave Energy Updates from Oregon State University: Details on the Open Source Laboratory Upgrade Point Absorber (LUPA) and PacWave, the Grid-Connected Open Ocean WEC Test Site

We are pleased to announce our next speaker, Courtney Beringer, from Oregon State University, US, on Tuesday 12th September 3pm-4pm to present her work on "Wave Energy Updates from Oregon State University: Details on the Open Source Laboratory Upgrade Point Absorber (LUPA) and PacWave, the Grid-Connected Open Ocean WEC Test Site".

The talk will take place in the Hudson Beare Lecture Theatre 2 and will be available online through MS Teams.

Abstract

The wave energy off the coast of Oregon is plentiful, and so are the opportunities in wave energy converters! This presentation will show work by researchers at Oregon State University developing an open source wave energy converter for lab testing, as well as updates with the PacWave grid connected test site, and other exciting work from the Pacific Marine Energy Center (PMEC). The open source wave energy converter (WEC) is a two body point absorber called the Lab Upgrade Point Absorber (LUPA). It is a highly modular WEC with an actively controlled power take off and can be reconfigured to a one body heave constrained, two body heave constrained, or two body six degrees of freedom. Data has already been published on the open source MHKDR website as well as CAD models and details on the <a href="https://pmec.us/LUPA" target="_blank">Lab Upgrade Point Absorber (LUPA) GitHub website</a>.

Biography

Courtney Beringer is a PhD candidate at Oregon State University studying Coastal and Ocean Engineering. Her research focuses on how the number of floating bodies and degrees of freedom of wave energy converters affects power capture and she also looks at quantifying uncertainty of common power metrics. Courtney spends a lot of time at the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory at OSU, building and testing the Lab Upgrade Point Absorber (LUPA), but also does her fair share of numerical modeling. Courtney has a bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Energy Systems from Iowa State University and is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.