Ocean Power Technologies awarded €2.2m

The grant to OPT is part of a total award of €4.5m to a consortium of companies, including OPT, who plan to deliver a PowerBuoy wave energy device in a project called WavePort. It is anticipated that the PowerBuoy will be deployed off the coast of Santoña in Spain, where OPT has worked on a wave energy project under contract from Iberdrola, the major Spanish utility company.

OPT will be responsible for the design, supply and deployment of the PowerBuoy and Underwater Substation Pod, with additional funding going to the remaining consortium members for the steel fabrication, wave-monitoring equipment, wave resource prediction research, system monitoring and project management.

As well as OPT, the consortium members include the Wave Energy Centre in Portugal, Fugro Oceanor in Norway, DeGima in Spain, Exeter University and ISRI.

OPT’s PowerBuoy has a proprietary energy conversion and control system that allows for wave-by-wave tuning of the device to optimize electrical output. Exeter University has expertise in the area of wave prediction and Fugro will provide wave-monitoring equipment to collect and transmit wave data to the PowerBuoy, with the aim of further increasing overall energy production.