SINN Power starts building wave energy project in Greece

June 13, 2018

SINN Power has attached two supporting structures for its wave energy converter (WEC) modules to the port wall in Heraklion on Crete, Greece, where the company will install and commission the first two of the total of five of its devices in early July.

The engineers with the completed supporting structures for the WEC modules at the port wall in Heraklion. Photo courtesy of SINN Power.

All five wave energy converter modules, with the revised SINN Power technology, are expected to be installed on the port wall by 2019.

The two WEC modules are funded by the German Federal Government and primarily serve to test the updated technology for its functionality.

This spring, the production of the individual components, which took place mostly in Germany, was completed and the WEC modules were then transported to Greece by truck. After the arrival of the truck with the components in early May, the SINN Power engineering team began welding the supporting structures, which were recently attached to the breakwater wall.

The lifting rods, generators and floating bodies will be assembled in the coming weeks.

Once the further three WECs are in place, they will allow for testing the electrical connection of several generators in practice and thus serve the further development of the innovative wave energy technology, the German wave energy developer said.

Illustration of the planned WEC test modules at the project site in Heraklion, Crete. Image courtesy of SINN Power.

The project is permanently supervised by five to seven SINN Power engineers at the project location in Greece. They monitor the mechanical loads of the revised WEC modules and evaluate the data on the generated electricity.

In August 2017, the company was awarded a €1.0 million grant from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) to expand its research activities on Crete with additional wave energy converters next to its WEC prototype installed in 2015 at the breakwater wall of the Port of Heraklion.

Following the successful completion of the test on the wall-mounted wave energy modules, SINN Power plans to test a floating version of its wave energy converter technology. The planned floating wave energy converter will consist of 18 modules.