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Background and History of the WWT up to the present

The problem of why real large scale renewable energy generation has not been forthcoming and has eluded the Scientific community for centuries, baffled the Inventors and it was decided to unravel the impasse.

The prohibitive flaw was defined as the conditioned approach to water currents, and that is to target the exotic and demonstrative Kinetic Energy, with little progress to show.

The Inventors embarked on a radical new approach of targeting mainly the Latent Potential Energy in Currents. This concept took form 2004, and it was the mission to produce a system that would be robust enough to last for many years, and simple enough to be cost effective.

Since 2004-5 basic real small scale testing began in order to understand the Physics as well as the practical problems and it was shown that it is possible to extract large energies from currents if the correct design is applied.

In 2006-9 various National patents and International patent applications were submitted.

During the period 2006-7, a number of proto tests were done in a canal, 1200mm wide by 700mm deep, carrying a freshwater current of around 300mm deep and flowing at around 5m/s, in order to research the optimization of Energy Extraction.

During the period 2008-9, a more definitive scaled Turbine model has been built with the view to produce Electrical Energy. This involved a variable speed gearbox to be able to verify the technology under different conditions.

During that time, in-depth research into Power Plant components was ongoing to find the solution for the transfer of the Energy in the Turbine, which consisted of extremely high Torque and very low RPM, to the Generator which is the inverse. Solutions over a wide range were found and manufacturing has started of Transmission-Generator combinations to address the different problems.

The stage has been reached where complete prototype Power Plants will have to be built to prove full-scale capability for Grid Connection, in both environments, sea and fresh water.