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tion by the U.S. Coast Guard and by the British who are using it in 

 isolated applications. 



The Japanese also have tested full scale turbines aboard their 

 vessel platform called the Kaimei which you see in that chart. 

 They have succeeded in transmitting for some period of time an 

 average net power of 25 kilowatts undersea for about 2 miles from 

 this platform into the Japanese grid. 



The United States, Britain, Canada, and Ireland recently all 

 participated with the Japanese in an international experiment on 

 that platform that was carried out through the auspices of the 

 International Energy Agency. The results of those experiments, 

 while not yet completely analyzed, unfortunately showed signifi- 

 cantly lower performance than was originally projected for the 

 devices used. 



We suspect that the lower performance was due to suboptimal 

 ship and cavity design on the Kaimei. 



Mr. Studds. Do you have numbers in terms of relative costs? 



Dr. Katz. All of these were one-of-a-kind items, so it is hard to 

 guess at what their production costs would be in a commercial 

 setting. 



The U.S. program is managed by the Solar Energy Research 

 Institute which has been assigned responsibility for the alternate 

 ocean energy systems program. 



We are basing our program on what is being carried out in the 

 international community as well as entering new areas of wave 

 energy R. & D. The U.S. wave program's primary initiative is in 

 the investigation of devices oriented into the incoming wave rather 

 than parallel to it, as done by the English. These devices, called 

 head sea devices, offer the advantage of lower costs and higher 

 survivability because their orientation allows them to have lower 

 mooring forces and to suffer lower structural loads. 



Theoretical studies carried out at MIT have shown that these 

 types of devices, if headed into the incoming wave, such as a ship 

 cutting across a wave front, will produce about 20-percent less 

 energy than the same device deployed parallel to the incoming 

 wave. 



However, the lower costs give this design a more economic out- 

 look than the more energy efficient beam sea devices. The MIT 

 work, therefore, offers a sound analytical basis on which to contin- 

 ue these types of investigations. 



The United States is emphasizing air or pneumatic turbine head 

 sea devices since their conversion equipment is above the water 

 and has the potential for reduced maintenance and increased reli- 

 ability. As you can see in this chart, the sea water is well below the 

 operating conversion equipment and this should lead to a longer 

 lifetime for that equipment. 



This low pressure air turbine of innovative design is now under 

 construction. While it is not practical to make an exact cost projec- 

 tion at this time, it does appear to offer potential for improved 

 performance and cost over the Japanese and British devices. Con- 

 struction and offshore testing of this device is expected to be com- 

 pleted during fiscal year 1981. 



A subscale wave tank experimental program is also planned to 

 confirm the theoretical models for head sea devices which have 



