U.S. Department of Energy Marine Energy Collegiate Competition (MECC)

Team Name: Sea Aggie Project

Texas A&M University at Galveston, Galveston, Texas

Partnered universities: Sam Houston State University, Texas A&M University College Station

Team deliverables

Vision and mission: Why this competition?

The Marine Energy Collegiate Competition is an opportunity for the team to contribute to the success of future renewable energy sources that power the blue economy. Given that our campus is next to the ocean, we feel that we have an opportunity to put our minds together to help increase awareness and contribute to harnessing clean, renewable energy.

Our team believes that the future is in harnessing the potential power of the ocean. Around 70 percent of the world is covered by ocean, an astonishing number and potential for energy conversion. Clean energy is the future and with countries such as the United States determined to become carbon neutral by year 2050, our team’s success is a contribution to this bigger goal.

Background

The goal of this project is to convert the wave and solar energy into electrical energy to power navigational lights for safe sailing for boats and ships. To harness the wave energy, we are mooring the buoys along the coastline of Pelican Island. The buoy will then generate electricity from waves and solar, to light up and store power for navigational purposes in accordance with Coast Guard regulations.

Given that this is the first year that our school is involved with this competition, we hope to develop a working product that produces a positive power output and is a good starting point for future teams. We hope to see future classes continue with our success and improve upon this year’s project.

Strategy

Our game plan is to:

Create a team of diverse and determined individuals
Create a working timeline for the project
Create conceptual ideas for the Wave Energy Converter (WEC)
Incorporate CAD drawings into a simulation
Gather analytical data from the simulation
Network with companies working in the Blue Economy
Fabricate the scale model of our WEC
Test and gather data from the scale model of our WEC in the lab
Fabricate half scale model of WEC
Test WEC out in the ocean.

Our campus, located next to the Galveston ship channel, is a natural strength for our team. This has allowed the team to test ideas and theories in real world environments, rather than wave tanks or other less dynamic locations. Our ideas have flourished due to the ease of testing directly in an open water environment.

The biggest hurdle the team has faced over the previous months has been securing the help to achieve our goals. The team only consists of five senior level undergraduate students and in many cases, we have found that more resources have been needed to divide the workload. In order for the team to be successful, we must keep our ideas simple rather than complex, due to our small team. Given certain problems, simplicity has led us to success, and we hope to continue this goal in the coming months as the competition nears completion.

Social media accounts

Instagram: @tamugsap

This portal is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) under Contract Number DE- AC36-08GO28308 with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Contract Number DE-AC05-76RL01830 with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Contract Number DE-NA0003525 with Sandia National Laboratories, as part of the MHK Data Communities project. The United States Government retains, and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes.

MECC 2022 Sea Aggie Project