It’s wave pool wars as an Occy backed ‘Surf Lakes’ join the race with a machine that can generate 2400 per hour…
The Surf Lakes start up hopes to license the technology around the world with a surf park opening in Queensland by the end of 2017, complete with eight different waves, including Occys Peak; a 2.4 metre barrelling 60 metre left.
“What’s even more exciting is that it provides fun for the entire family and I am looking forward to bringing mine to the Surf Lake and seeing the kids surf different waves at the same time,” said Occ.
The demo facility will be the size of 20 Olympic swimming pools and already has the technology to generate 2400 waves per hour, said Surf Lakes founder Aaron Trevis.
What do you think?
How they stack up
Surf lakes
8 waves for various levels. 2.4 metres high, 60 metres long barrelling Occys Peaks 2,400 waves per hour. Uses a pump or piston type device (I’m guessing!) to push waves out from a central generator to several banks, reefs or points. The beauty is 8 waves breaking simultaneously. Pays your money takes your choice. Only at prototype stage so be interesting to see scaled up.
Slaters Wave
2.1 metre tube 250km away 15 waves per hour. Sled type device pushed down a track similar to Wavegardens Lagoon. Pushing the water produces a ‘wake’ type wave. The barrel comes for the sled angle, speed and bathymetry. Hard to reset this type of tech as it ‘pushes’ water like tsunami and create huge amounts of wash. Hence the oft quoted one wave every 12 minutes (the pool has to settle). They are currently trying out the tech on the left, but they have to nail the wash to go fully commercial, which means bigger test pools. Watch the backwash behind the wave…
Wavegarden Cove
2.4 metres, 1,000 per hour – opening Bristol and WA 2018. Also possibly London and Scotland.
So we saw a video we weren’t supposed to see and it appears that the tech uses modular ‘piston’ type tech to push wave energy down the pool. Owners claim it is hugely efficient, so low running costs which means a great commercial model, attractive investment opps and a fast roll out. They nailed the wash too so they are well ahead in the game. On a bigger scale this has the capability of producing more than one ridable wave per cycle, so it will be interesting to see if they develop it further away from linear wave generation i.e. waves coming down a track rather than the concentric wave idea of Surf Lakes.
Wavegarden Lagoon.
Open commercially in Texas and the UK Surf Snowdonia is a head high 150 metres long, roughly 60 waves per hour both rights and lefts (so effectively 120 ridable waves per hour) Same basic tech as Slaters wave, but without the barrel bathymetry…Unless you know where to look. Everyone missed this but the fact is WG Lagoon does barrel… The waves that run down the side walls are like mini Kirra and mini Mundaka… They are in fact mini Slaters waves, but WG chose a fatter wave in the middle of the pool and greater frequency which equals a commercial model as opposed to Slaters ‘protoype’.
