The WEC technology has demonstrated a step-change improvement in the structural efficiency of wave energy, allowing a large amount of energy to be delivered by small low-cost devices. The demonstration program is on track to bring certified and warrantied WEC products in the market by 2026/2027, allowing customers to build commercial wave arrays using conventional project financing.

This oral presentation will take the audience through CorPower‘s journey to the ocean, including sharing of lessons learned for the first full commercial scale WEC deployment and insights into the next steps for our key projects around the globe.

Structured product verification processes are well underway to advance the ocean energy sector. Strategic collaboration agreements with project developers have been established to deliver the commercial wave farms. Simply Blue Energy has recently announced the Saoirse Wave Energy project in Ireland.

Following successful test results though Stage 1 –3 of the structured verification process, several utilities and project developers have joined the Stage 4-5 WEC array demonstration program called “ HiWave-5”. Stage 4 saw the design and construction of a 7.2 MW dry test facility, which is to our knowledge, the world’s largest dry-test facility for WECs of its kind. The test rig was designed and commissioned in collaboration with ABB and additional partners. The investment in the state-of-the-art dry test facility enabled CorPower to fully test and de-risk the C4 PTO system ocean deployment.

The C4 WEC was commissioned and operated at the Aguçadoura site during the first ocean deployment period. The survivability of the C4 WEC has been confirmed by weathering four major storms, with waves reaching 18.5m in height, and demonstrating ability to re-commence power export to the grid after each storm passed. Power production model calibration was successful and indicates slightly higher performance vs model in sea-states tested to date.