Hitachi Zosen Corporation will bring to the market its floating wave-activated power generation plant in fiscal 2015. The company plans to further pursue its research and development to explore ways to reduce the power generating cost and release the product onto the market by early fiscal 2015. The plant will be sold mainly in a set of five units joined together, with each unit having an output of 100 kW for sale in the domestic market and 200 kW for overseas markets. The company aims to sell about 400 units by the end of fiscal 2020.
The wave-activated power plant of Hitachi Zosen has been designed based on the gyroscopic wave-activated power generating system developed by Kobe University’s emeritus professor Hiroshi Kanki and other researchers. The system uses a physical law known as gyroscopic precession, where a force applied to tilt a disk rapidly rotating in the horizontal direction causes the rotational axis to become vertical while the horizontal rotation is maintained.
Many wave-activated power generators developed by other companies are designed to rotate turbines by using the vertical movements of the waves to create airflow. However, a drawback to this type of systems is that they require large equipment. On the other hand, the gyroscopic system offers an advantage by allowing the use of more lightweight and compact equipment.
Hitachi Zosen intends to expand its plant sales from within Japan to overseas markets in regions where constant waves of 1.5 meters or more can be expected all year round, including Southeast Asian island nations as well as Europe and Australia.
