Wave Energy Scotland awards £2.84 million to four marine energy projects

Four wave energy technology developers are to be awarded a total of £2.84 million (US$3.67 million) by Wave Energy Scotland (WES) after successfully competing to join stage two of an innovative technology development programme.

The funding will support further design, modelling and testing of technologies being developed through WES’s Novel Wave Energy Converter (NWEC) programme, one of a series of programmes designed to help commercialize the wave energy sector in Scotland.

WES selected the four projects as the most promising of eight applications from contractors in stage one of its NWEC programme, which focuses on solutions to capture wave movement. They will now progress to stage two of the programme which is expected to run until autumn 2018. Once this stage concludes, the project teams can apply for stage three funding to develop a scaled prototype device for real sea testing at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney.

WES, a subsidiary of Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) and funded by the Scottish Government, will support all projects that successfully pass through competitive stage gate reviews during the programme.

This latest announcement from WES brings the total investment by the organization in wave energy technology development to £24.6 million (US$31.8 million) across 56 projects in just over two years.

Tim Hurst, WES managing director, said:

“Our competitive technology development process aims to bring forward projects that will promote greater confidence in the technical performance of wave energy systems. This, of course, calls for very rigorous assessment and some difficult decisions about investment. I am pleased to confirm our further support for these four projects through to the next stage of development and very much look forward to seeing how the project teams might further develop their wave energy converter designs.”

The four projects awarded were:

1. ACER2 by 4c Engineering with £659,516 (US$851,983): The Sea Power Platform is a low draft, low profile floating device which captures wave energy through relative motion of two hinged structures. The floating structures respond in heave and pitch to the oncoming waves and are configured to react against each other. Power is taken off at the hinged connection of the two structures. The device is slack-moored to the seabed using three or four mooring lines, depending on the size of device and the site. 
2. Improved Archimedes Waveswing™ by AWS Ocean Energy Ltd with £721,265 (US$931,752): This project will investigate the effects of the technology advances and in particular confirm the potential for projected performance improvement and cost reduction, thus setting a solid foundation for a renewed development programme for the Waveswing™ technology.
3. Anaconda Novel Wave Energy Converter Stage 2 by Checkmate Seaenergy Ltd with £727,135 (US$939,335): The engineering program will focus on detailed structural design assessments, subsystem engineering and an assessment of hysteresis impacts of using rubber. It will also cover further design work on local structural details to assess their resilience in fatigue and ultimate loading conditions for sub-scale sea prototype deployment in stage 3 and in particular the technology readiness of the fundamental tube absorber technology.
4. Mocean WEC: Next-Level Hydrodynamics and Engineering by Mocean Energy Ltd with £729,948 (US$942,969): The Mocean WEC is a hinged raft with a rotational power take-off (PTO). The design innovation is in the geometry of the two hulls:
   • submerged nose and tail
   • cross-coupling between modes of motion
   • higher excitation force
   • good survivability
   • more power per size