Swedish wave energy developer CorPower Ocean has signed up to test its novel resonant wave energy converter at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney, EMEC said in a statement.

This announcement follows CorPower’s success in Wave Energy Scotland’s (WES) power-take-off (PTO) call that, combined with funding from KIC InnoEnergy and the Swedish Energy Agency, completes a EUR 6.5-million Stage 3 funding round for dry rig testing of a half scale prototype system followed by an ocean deployment at EMEC’s scale test site in Scapa Flow.

The project aims to deliver a highly reliable PTO solution using the innovative WaveSpring control technology offering a step-change improvement in performance and cost to the wave energy sector.

“We are very excited to be partnering with EMEC, as they bring immense amounts of experience and lessons learned from previous wave projects on Orkney. Having shown game changing performance in previous stages, expectations are high for this Stage 3 program,” CorPower CEO Patrik Möller said in the statement.

EMEC Managing Director Neil Kermode said that the project was particularly exciting for EMEC as it includes the installation of additional infrastructure – a PTO dry test rig – near the Scapa Flow wave test site. “This test rig will act as a lasting legacy of CorPower’s test programme and WES’ foresight, as it will be available to support the development of other wave and tidal energy converters in the future,” he said.

oThe project will involve a five-month programme of cyclical dry and wet testing of the system in Orkney, culminating in a performance assessment by EMEC. Prior to arriving in Orkney, the PTO will undergo a five-month dry test period in Stockholm using the same test rig, thereby significantly de-risking the ocean deployment.

For more information:
http://www.emec.org.uk/press-release-corpower-ocean-sign-up-to-test-at-emec/