Columbia Power secures Japanese wave patent

US-based wave energy company Columbia Power Technologies has received a patent from the Japan Patent Office for its StingRAY wave energy system.

The patent No. 6297576, entitled ‘Method and system for wave energy conversion’, is the 20th issued patent within the three patent families that cover Columbia’s wave energy and direct-drive generator technologies, the company informed.

An additional four patents within the current applications and two new provisional applications are expected this year, Columbia Power said.

The StingRAY device, intended for utility-scale applications, uses two floats to capture wave energy and two rotary permanent-magnet generators to convert the energy into electricity.

Each float is directly coupled to its own generator, which enables a single energy-capture/conversion cycle.

The large-scale StingRAY wave energy device is planned to be deployed at the US Navy’s Wave Energy Test Site in Hawaii in 2018.