Re Vision has designed a USV-based WEC platform, called PERSISTENCE, that can host and recharge different types of payloads. The primary aim of PERSISTENCE is to provide continuous power anywhere in the ocean worldwide. The system is being developed under the Ocean Observing Prize (OOP) competition that was established by the US Department of Energy and NOAA where Re Vision received a prize award in the OOP design competition and are presently competing in the build phase to be completed in June 2022 at the NSWC Carderock. The core technical objectives for this TEAMER award are for NREL to experimentally test Re Vision’s PERSISTENCE direct-drive PTO system using their dynamometer facilities. The proposed test plan will assist in (1) establishing an efficiency map of the PTO (establishing the efficiency as a function of torque and RPM), (2) test the winch behavior when loaded cyclically (ensure that the tether rolls on and off consistently), and (3) test the PTO under simulated wave conditions to understand the dynamic behavior of the PTO under fluctuating loading.

This project was supported during RFTS 5.