Danish renewable energy company welcomes new year on the crest of a wave

January 3, 2023, by Amir Garanovic

Danish company Crestwing has entered the new year with significant funding commitments secured from both government and private entities that will be used to further advance its wave energy technology and bring it to market-ready stage.

The deployment of Crestwing's Tordenskiold wave energy prototype (Courtesy of Crestwing)

Supported with over €1 million in fresh funding, with the largest share coming from the Danish government’s Energy Technology Development and Demonstration Program (EUDP), the developer of the floating attenuator-type of wave energy technology Crestwing stands ready to take its clean energy-generating device to the next level.

Crestwing’s wave energy prototype – a 30-meters long, 7.5-meters wide device, weighing 65 tons – has already underwent two offshore testing campaigns northeast of the Hirsholm islands in Kattegat strait, the latest of which was completed in 2002.

The technology operates parallel to the wave direction and exploits its hinge-pontoon design to capture the energy from the passing wave through the relative motion of its two arms to produce electricity.

During the real sea trials, the prototype – named Tordenskiold – served Crestwing to collect data on the wave power plant’s capacity and efficiency in all kinds of conditions encountered at the site, ranging from small waves to storms and hurricanes.

Aside from providing Crestwing with the starting point to further optimize its technology, the collected information was also used by the Danish-based multidisciplinary engineering consultancy NIRAS to compare the offshore data with previous pool tests and specifics about the technology amassed over the course of 15 years.

Crestwing's Tordenskiold wave energy prototype operating offshore Denmark (Courtesy of Crestwing) — Crestwing’s Tordenskiold wave energy prototype operating offshore Denmark (Courtesy of Crestwing)

Based on this, NIRAS found that the wave energy device’s mechanics were robust and flexible, but more should be done to improve the conversion of wave energy to electricity as one of the challenges that Crestwing failed to tackle successfully during the offshore tests with Tordenskiold was to validate the power efficiency curve that previous tank tests have predicted.

Now, Crestwing has secured the funding commitment from EUDP amounting to €980,000 (DKK 7.3 million), that may serve to tackle the issues identified in previous deployments as the supported project has set aim to demonstrate a market-ready, profitable, efficient and reliable wave energy plant.

Crestwing will be developing the project in collaboration with Aalborg University (AAU), a full-service marine engineering company Shipcon, and software and engineering company Logimatic Engineering.

During the project, the partners will work on the optimization of Crestwing’s power take-off (PTO) system, the installation of a max power point tracker controller (MPPT) – a system used with variable power sources to maximize energy extraction as conditions vary, and the development of a microgrid.

The innovations will then be incorporated on Crestwing’s Tordenskiold prototype, as the project aims to prepare the company and its technology to enter the market by 2025.

Commenting on the latest EUDP funding, which supported 19 projects with a total of €27 million (DKK 191 million), Lars Aagaard, Denmark’s minister for climate and energy, said: “Denmark invests in research and development. It is important for the green transition to take place effectively and create opportunities for Danish companies. The grant from EUDP helps to give even more momentum to that development.”

In addition to EUDP funding, confirmed officially in December 2022, Crestwing was also successful in obtaining investment from Norlys, the country’s largest integrated energy and telecommunications group, through its Growth Pool fund established to help accelerate green energy transition.

According to the approved project, Crestwing will receive €25,000 (DKK 190,000) to perform simulations of the operation of wave energy parks featuring its wave energy technology.

To remind, Crestwing has also benefitted from the Danish Independent Research Fund which awarded a €830,000 (DKK 6.2 million) grant to the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Aarhus University (AU) for a research project to streamline the existing Crestwing’s wave energy plant in order to improve its hydrodynamic properties and reduce production, and operation and maintenance costs.

The three-year project, approved for funding in 2021, will investigate, develop and use simulation tools to unravel the underlying physics and identify key parameters for optimizing the plant both in terms of cost and efficiency.