MIT Sea Grant led team advances to next phase of the Wave Energy Prize Contest

Team IOwec, led by MIT Sea Grant’s Assistant Director of Research Dr. Stefano Brizzolara, will advance to the next level in the highly competitive Wave Energy Prize Contest put on by the U. S. Department of Energy.The team designed an Inertial Ocean Wave Energy Converter, or IOWEC, which is an all enclosed, monolithic floating Wave Energy Converter. Team IOwec was one of 20 selected to move on to the next phase out of 92 teams. The teams that have advanced will now build a 1/50th scale model of their proposed design and will participate in small-scale tank testing as a means of validating their concepts. Three finalist will be announced March of 2016. The top prize for the competition is a purse of $1.5 million dollars. The IOwec team is a collaboration between the MIT Sea Grant, the Politecnico di Torino, Florida Atlantic University, and private company Wave4Energy. Dr. Stefano Brizzolara is joined by Dr. Guiliana Mattiazzo, and Dr. Manhar Dhanak. The team has extensive experience in ocean engineering and renewable energy.See full press release at https://waveenergyprize.org.