“This approval is an important milestone for RME. After several years of research and testing we are finally poised to move forward with a commercial project that will have us providing renewable power to a community,” said Bill Staby, founder and CEO of RME. “We look forward to working with our partners in Yakutat as we begin to move this project from vision to reality.”
RME filed an application for a preliminary permit under section 4(f) of the Federal Power Act to study the feasibility of the Yakutat Alaska Wave Energy Project on July 25, 2012.
The project involves a 25-square-mile area within Alaska’s submerged lands off Yakutat, a remote community in the southeast portion of Alaska. As presently planned, the project will consist of an array of RME’s SurgeWEC wave energy converters for a total installed capacity of 750 kilowatts. The project would offer an estimated annual generation of over 3,000 MWh.
“With this FERC approval we can begin the studies and the planning that are necessary to design the project and to prepare the needed application for a FERC license to operate," said RME Senior Engineer and project manager Clifford Goudey. "We need to characterize the wave resource in detail and engineer a system that will provide the most benefit to the community by alleviating its current dependence upon its diesel-powered generating plant.”
In December 2012 RME successfully tested its latest SurgeWEC device off the Outer Banks in Duck, North Carolina in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The tests demonstrated RME’s novel approach to low-cost deployment and provided performance data over the six weeks of testing. The tests were the final phase of work under an award from the Department of Energy that helped support the advancement of RME’s wave energy technology to its present commercial readiness state.
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