Our Prototype

This is our original Wavemaster design drawing. As you can see, the power generating equipment (a sealed copper coil with a magnet that moves up and down through the center) is anchored to the seafloor. This is unlike any other design proposed before. A buoy floating on the surface above is attached to the magnet by a cable. As the buoy rides the waves, it pulls the magnet past the coil, creating electricity.

This means that all our most expensive equipment sits safely 100 feet or so beneath the waves. If a big storm comes and the buoy snaps off, all we lose is a buoy, which is easy to replace. Also, we plan on using GPS and a transmitter on the buoy so we could track it down and reattach it. The best thing about our design is that it is so simple, it has very few moving parts, and it is cost effective. It also meets all our design criteria.

This is our 1/30th scale-model wave farm. We built it using materials that we could buy at any store and rearrange to fit our purpose. The farm has three Wavemaster power poles. Each pole has positive and negative wires leading to a central junction box. There, power from all three poles is combined and transferred to the shore by a single undersea cable. When we filled our tank with water and turned on our wavemaker, we actually registered power on a meter.

In this picture, you can see the whole prototype, including the amp meter, which actually registered power when the prototype was running, and the simulated power plant we added to make our model look cool.