EU splashes €5 million on wave energy MegaRoller

Finnish developer AW-Energy has secured €5 million from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program to develop a power take-off (PTO) unit for 1MW wave energy device.

The 3-year MegaRoller project, coordinated by Hydroll, involves the collaboration of 10 partners consisting of companies and research institutes.

The project will start in the beginning of May 2018, under which the 1MW PTO will be designed, built and tested at the AW-Energy research center in Finland.

With the MegaRoller project, AW-Energy aims to further drive down the levelized cost of energy (LCOE), and produce a commercially feasible PTO for 1MW device.

Tuula Mäki, AW-Energy Product Quality and Certification Manager, said: “Reliability and quality have been at the center of WaveRoller development. Now we are preparing to build on these solid foundations to extend the rating to 1MW with a team of world class expertise across Europe.”

Jussi Åkerberg, CTO of AW-Energy, added: “We are mobilizing the latest technology from other engineering disciplines and even neurosciences. In our view technology cross-overs will be an essential part of future innovations enabling sustainable growth. We anticipate that developments in machine learning and IoT will enable us to reach our goal of reducing the price of energy.”

Other project partners, coming from Portugal, Finland, Germany and Norway, include ABB Finland, Cruz Atcheson, WavEC, Hydman, SINTEF, VTT, the University of Bergen and the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology.