WCWI Contributes to Marine Energy Standards
Founded in 1906, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is a non-profit organization that prepares and publishes International standards on electrical technologies. A sub-committee of the IEC, called Technical Committee 114 (TC114), is dedicated to developing standards on marine energy conversion. Within TC114, there are a number of project teams dedicated to developing standards for various aspects of wave energy conversion. Some of the project teams have completed their standards, and some are still developing their standards. Standards for marine energy conversion are seen as a necessary step to build trust and transparency in the industry.
The WCWI is contributing to Marine energy standards in the following ways: Scott Beatty is the Convener of a team, called “Ad Hoc Group 3”, dedicated to maintaining the Technical Specification 62600-100 on the performance assessment of WECs which was published in 2012 and is officially available here. In addition, Scott is a subject matter expert on project team 102 which is dedicated to developing a specification for assessment of the performance of WECs at a second location given measured power output at a first location. Further, Helen Bailey is a member of the Canadian Shadow Committees for “Ad Hoc Group 3” as mentioned above and “Project Team 30” which focuses on power quality standards. Lastly, Bryson Robertson is a member of the Canadian Shadow Committee for “Project Team 30” and “Project Team 101”, which focuses on standardizing methodologies for wave resource assessment.
This year, the IEC-TC114’s annual plenary meeting was held in Vancouver on April 23-25 where delegates from 12 countries converged to discuss the progress and development of each of the project teams. Twelve countries were represented at the meetings: Canada, USA, Denmark, Korea, Japan, Ireland, UK, Spain, Germany, Sweden, France, Netherlands. Scott Beatty contributed as part of the Canadian delegation for those meetings.
The work output of the WCWI is highly valuable to the development of standards. The WCWI plans to maintain a strong presence in the development of standards as we move forward.