Ocean Harvesting targets €400K to optimize wave energy device

April 10, 2023, by Amir Garanovic

Swedish company Ocean Harvesting Technologies has embarked on a funding raise, targeting €400,000 to further optimize its InfinityWEC wave energy device ahead of sea trials.

The funding will support Ocean Harvesting in enhancing the control system and optimization of the design of InfinityWEC wave energy converter, ahead of sea trials of InfinityWEC in scale 1:3, planned for the start of 2024 until the end of 2025.

The project has already been awarded a €2 million grant financing from the Swedish Energy Agency, with an additional €3 million to be raised later in the year.

InfinityWEC can unlock the potential of wave energy through its advanced power take-off (PTO) and control system, which tunes to every individual wave to produce electricity efficiently in all sea states, Ocean Harvesting claims.

Furthermore, InfinityWEC’s end-stop function is said to ensure both survival and continuous, reliable power production even in the harshest wave conditions.

The buoy is made of high strength concrete, with weight similar to a conventional steel hull, but at a quarter of the cost, a third of the CO2 footprint, and one tenth of the manufacturing time, according to the company.

“The technology is unique in its capability to host and benefit from advanced predictive control algorithms and Ocean Harvesting Technologies is now implementing recent advancements from leading researchers in the field, showing very promising results in terms of increasing the energy output, reducing loads and being fast enough for a real time control system.

“We will demonstrate the performance of model-based predictive control algorithms in real sea testing,” Ocean Harvesting said.