The project was ranked as #1 of all proposed European renewable energy projects in KIC InnoEnergy’s 2013 call. In the pilot, CorPower Ocean is responsible for supplying and optimizing the performance of the WEC, Iberdrola Engineering for integrating it with mooring system and performing engineering, procurement and construction for the test installations. WavEC is responsible for numerical simulations and scientific analysis of results and dissemination.

The aim is to prove functionality and performance in ocean environment with a system having the same annual energy per ton as shown in Stage 2, targeting >8MWh/ton. It is also expected to gather product data supporting a cost of energy making wave power competitive with offshore wind.

The project is looking to demonstrate innovative end-stop and power smoothing technology. These new solutions are expected to furhter  improve the survivability and reliability of resonant Wave Energy Converters.

The WaveBoost project brings together a consortium of sector leaders from Sweden, Portugal and the UK:

EMEC, UK,  EDP Innovação SA, Portugal, PMC Cylinders AB, Sweden, GS Hydro AB, Sweden, The University of Edinburgh, UK, WavEC Offshore Renewables, Portugal, The Research Institute of Sweden (RISE), Sweden. The project coordinator is CorPower Ocean AB.

This project in enabled by Wave Energy Scotland and aims at delivering a highly reliable PTO solution using innovative control technology offering a step-change improvement in performance and cost to the wave energy sector.

Wave Energy Converters have so far been too large, heavy and costly compared to their energy output. The HiDrive PTO incorporates innovative phase control technology that make wave buoys oscillate in resonance with the incoming waves. This strongly amplifies the motion and the power capture. The technology offers an exceptionally high energy density, five times higher than the previous state-of-the-art. This allows a large amount of energy to be harvested using a small device. The same phase control module is used to detune the device in storms, strongly improving survivability.

The unique PTO technology will be taken through the next step of structured verification, guided by best practice support from EMEC, the experience from offshore power generation company Iberdrola Engineering and by the expertise in cost modelling of University of Edinburgh. An advanced Hardware-in-the-loop test rig is used for dry verification of PTOs on-land, significantly de-risking the following ocean testing of the HiDrive technology.