Associate Professor of Ocean Engineering Reza Hashemi has been named to the Board of Directors of Marine Renewable Energy Collaborative of New England (MRECo). The collaborative is a nonprofit corporation that educates and involves all stakeholders (academic, industry, governmental/regulatory, and public interest groups) to promote the sustainable development of renewable energy in New England ocean waters. “There’s no way to continue using fossil fuels,” Hashemi said, “and one of my research themes is ocean renewable energy.”
One challenge that ocean renewable tech has is simply that it is far behind other energy development. “If you look at fossil fuel, you see that there has been a lot of investment. A lot of years, a lot of people, a lot of engineers, so that’s why it’s very efficient. It’s cheap, relatively,” Hashemi said. “But unfortunately, it’s not clean. Then you go to offshore wind. People have been using windmills to generate energy for more than 1000 years. Wind turbine use involves some very old technologies, so it’s relatively mature. But the wave and tidal energy is quite new, and it needs some initiatives and activities to support its development.”
One way MRECo seeks to develop marine kinesthetic energy is to provide researchers access to a permitted site by the Bourne Bridge in the Cape Cod Canal. “Let’s say you create a device, and you want to show that this device works. There are several ways to prove this: numerical modeling, experimental testing by something like URI’s wave tank, but ideally you want to test it somewhere more realistic.”
MRECo has established a site in the channel near the bridge. There the water flow is relatively fast, at one to two meters per second. Still, finding a location for the site was complicated by the presence of boat traffic. The organization finally located a site that could accommodate operations like putting a turbine in the water for testing. Owned by the Army Corps of Engineers, the MRECo site has permits and licenses to use the spot. It includes some infrastructure like electricity and a crane. An industry could put an experimental turbine in a site that is already permitted, saving that industry from having to conquer the hurdle of obtaining their own. “The permit process is extremely difficult,” Hashemi said.
“We can’t just go out and put a turbine anywhere in the ocean.”
MRECo is also in the process of being listed as a test center for the Department of Energy. Once this happens, Hashemi could serve as a consultant for a company that may want to come and deploy instruments. “A company could come to URI and we could go to the site and conduct experiments for them. URI researchers and students would have an opportunity to engage in that process.”
Story by Hugh Markey