Wave powered buoy from NIOT to help cheaper, reliable navigation

CHENNAI: Chennai-based National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) has developed India’s first Wave Powered Navigation Buoy, which is cheaper and reliable than the imported solar-powered conventional buoys used by most of Indian ports and harbours.

Purnima Jalihal, Head, Energy and Freshwater Programme, NIOT, told Express on the sidelines of the Women Scientists and Entrepreneurs Conclave at Anna University, that the wave-powered navigation buoys have a good market with ship traffic increasing and India’s plans to have more ports along the coastline.

“All the navigation buoys that are in use are imported and each costs `20 lakh. The NIOT development wave powered navigation buoy will be at least 30 per cent cheaper and more durable. The solar panels in the conventional buoys gets destroyed quickly, but our buoy can serve for a longer time,” she said.
Currently, rigorous trials are being conducted for the past one month at Ennore port and the data is being analysed.

“So far, the performance has been satisfactory. We plan to unveil the product at the International Energy Agency-Ocean Energy Systems (IEA-OES) meeting to be held at NIOT next month,” Purnima said.
India became member of IEA-OES last year. It will be hosting the executive committee meeting for the first time next month.

By becoming a member of IEA-OES, India will have access to advanced R&D teams and technologies across the world. India will partner in developing test protocols along with other countries. This will help in testing Indian prototypes as per international requirements and norms.Joint cooperative programmes with institutes of member-countries could be taken up. The IEA acts as energy policy advisor to 29 member-countries.

Purnima said NIOT has been trying to harness wave energy for the last 10 years and the dream was to power a desalination plant with wave energy. This navigation buoy is the first commercial product being rolled out using years of expertise.

Way forward

One estimate says world’s oceans can provide two trillion watts of electricity
Although a proper resource assessment at specific sites in India is required to assess the true potential, as per the standard world map, Indian potential is around 14 kW per m on an average
With about 7,500 km shoreline, even with modest 10 per cent utilisation, the energy generated could be anywhere between 3,750-7,500 MW
Both the east and west coasts have a potential to harvest energy