Ocean Grazer Project

News: Our team was nominated for the Huibregtsenprijs and won the inaugural Ben Feringa Impact Award of the University of Groningen. We thank the university for this recognition.

Research on the Ocean Grazer, a novel renewable energy harvesting and storage technology, is led by the CMME (Prof. Antonis I. Vakis and Drs Wout Prins), the inventor of the original concept and DTPA (Prof. Bayu Jayawardhana) groups. Our technology aims to exploit the unused potential of offshore renewable energy by developing innovative solutions that improve the efficiency of offshore wind farms and increase the energy yield per square kilometer. This potential can be unlocked by combining various renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and wave energy at a given deployment location, within hybrid devices that also feature on-site energy storage. Our long-term goal is to bring wave power to maturity via synergy with existing technologies and the smart sharing of infrastructure. The value of offshore energy sources can be increased considerably if the output can be made controllable and thus predictable: unique storage and wave control will coordinate the energy optimization processes within hybrid energy farms to dispatch energy in an optimal way, either directly to the electricity grid or in Power-to-Liquids and other processes.

Our team has been successful in developing the fundamental knowledge and underlying models, validated via experimental prototypes, which are used to realize our novel energy harvesting and storage technologies. We maintain close cooperation with our spin-off company Ocean Grazer B.V., whose CTO, drs. Marijn van Rooij, is a former member of our team. We also collaborate with colleagues at the University of Groningen and elsewhere on topics ranging from hydrodynamics and fluid-structure interactions , to biomimetics , materials engineering , energy law and marine spatial planning . Due to its interdisciplinary nature, the Ocean Grazer project features in the Groningen Engineering Center , the Data Science and Systems Complexity theme, and the New Energy Coalition .

For more information, visit the Ocean Grazer website.

Ocean Grazer team

Prof. Antonis I. Vakis
Prof. Bayu Jayawardhana
Drs W.A. Prins

Links

List of past projects (including non-Ocean Grazer topics)

List of publications (including on non-Ocean Grazer topics)

List of press/media coverage