Wave tank testing was successfully completed in Nantes, France

HelioRec's full-scale floating solar prototype was tested during two week campaign and patented ‘hydro-lock’ ballasting feature was proved.

Wave tank testing was successfully completed in Nantes, France

The goal of the ‘hydro-lock’ feature is to keep water inside the floater to give additional mass and, consequently, additional stability while avoiding extra costs from other materials for ballasting, such as metal and concrete.

The wave tank testing was conducted by high-level experts from Ecole Centrale de Nantes (ECN), also served for the assessment of a number of parameters including:

  • system acceleration;
  • mooring lines tension;
  • loads on the connectors and
  • different angles, against both regular and irregular waves.

Polina Vasilenko, founder and CEO at HelioRec, said:

“I was pleasantly surprised by excellent quality of work from ECN’s specialists who constructed the prototype and conducted the wave tank testing. Everyone was very supportive and emotionally involved in the process and tried their best during the testing. Our team is looking forward for future collaboration with ECN.”

All collected data will be carefully analyzed and existing numerical model will be confirmed by experts from InnoSea. 

The next step in the technology development is to install pilot project in the Netherlands as part of the PortXL accelerator, where HelioRec was accepted among 1000 applicants.

The interest from a number of Dutch companies already was expressed for the pilot installation in the Rotterdam area, and HelioRec’s technical team is preparing a feasibility studies.