About Our Journey
The Docgen platform is the creation of the parent company 4Rivers Power Engineering Pty Ltd, originally based in Cairns, Queensland, Australia.
Cairns is situated in the far North of Queensland, between the Great Barrier Reef and the oldest rainforest on the planet. If you have visited Cairns, you would easily understand a strong desire to preserve that World Heritage region.
By 2010, 4Rivers Power Engineering moved to Brisbane, the states capitol, and the passion continued to develop a breakout technology very different from what was and is in the ‘Renewable Energy’ space.
The decades long search was governed by a few strict rules:
The energy source must historically be part of our planet for millions of years.
It had to be sufficiently powerful to potentially generate GigaWatts of power at a minimum
It had to lend itself to power generation without any polluting byproducts
Continuous in nature, to be suitable to Base Load power source
Ideally, relatively cheap to convert to electricity.
Some basic physics; The most powerful energy force within our planet is the gradational attraction between the Sun, moon and Earth. The rotation of these objects effects both land and sea, although the net effect on the land is almost unnoticeable.
The effect on the winds and oceans is very noticeable. The result is tides and ocean currents. Now we have a prime mover, deep ocean currents.
Ocean vessels have a limited commercial life. Around 25 years. They are then broken up in a less than desirable manner. Why not give them a new life.
ULCCs (Ultra Large Crude Oil Carriers) are ideal to convert to Docgens because of their size, in-situ piping and double sealed tanks, which make them suitable for controlled sinking.
The next design constraint was for multi vaned turbines capable of transferring ultra high torque forces from slow moving currents to hydraulic pumps.
The turbine had to have safety features such that small, medium and very large marine fauna could not be injured in operation.
And knowing how curious whales are, all this had to be encased in a whale excluder ring around every turbine.