A consortium of European companies has today been awarded a European Commission grant of €4.5m to develop enhanced wave energy technology as part of a project off the coast of Spain.
The project, known as WavePort, will bring together a number of leading European wave energy specialists, including Ocean Power Technologies (OPT), Portugal's Wave Energy Centre, Fugro Oceanor from Norway, Spanish engineering firm DeGima, the University of Exeter, and the UK's Intelligent Systems Research Institute.
As part of the award, OPT will receive a €2.2m grant to support the design, supply and deployment of its PowerBuoy wave generator and an Underwater Substation Pod to collect, transform, and distribute the resulting energy.
OPT, which is dual-listed on Nasdaq and London's Alternative Investment Market, has emerged as one of the world's leading wave energy firms and currently has pilot projects for its technology underway in the US, Australia and the UK.
Meanwhile, the University of Exeter will contribute expertise in the field of wave prediction and Fugro Oceanor will provide wave-monitoring equipment to collect and transmit wave data to the PowerBuoy, with the aim of further increasing overall energy production.
In a statement, Charles F Dunleavy, chief executive officer of OPT, hailed the new funding as "a springboard for OPT to further develop our Spanish project and to demonstrate the commercial performance of the PowerBuoy's proprietary and innovative tuning system".
The PowerBuoy is expected to be deployed at the Santoña site in Spain, where OPT has been working on the wave energy project under contract from Iberdrola, the major Spanish utility company.
In July 2006, OPT formed a joint venture with Iberdrola, oil company Total, the Spanish government's IDAE (Institute of Energy Savings and Efficiency), and the local regional development agency SODERCAN, for the construction of a wave farm off the north coast of Spain.
Last year, the company also signed a deal with the South West Regional Development Agency to build, install and operate a wave power station at the proposed Wave Hub testing site about 17km off the coast of St Ives in Cornwall.
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