The CorPower Ocean's wave energy solution invention.

The climate crisis is one of the most critical problems facing humanity today. As global temperatures continue to rise, the effects of climate change are becoming increasingly evident through more frequent and severe weather events, rising sea levels, and the loss of biodiversity. The world must undergo a rapid and comprehensive energy transition, shifting from dependence on fossil fuels to a more sustainable, low-carbon energy system.?

From an ingenue point of view, the solution to the energy transition seems through our eyes. Sun and wind are unlimited sources of energy.?

Nevertheless, making them useful involves political and economic issues and technological competencies. Investment in those resources is increasing, and the technologies are becoming more performative and affordable.?

Behind the development of the renewable energy industry, a worldwide growing demand for energy exists.?

As the global population grows and economies develop, energy demand will increase significantly. Some estimates suggest that global energy consumption could double by 2040/45. This growing demand places additional pressure on our energy systems, making the transition to renewable energy sources even more critical.

However, another energy source is less widespread, although it is widely available for large-scale exploitation: wave energy.??

What is wave energy?

Wave energy, which harnesses the power of ocean waves to generate electricity, is a promising renewable energy source yet to be fully exploited. With an estimated global potential of 1.8 terawatts (TW) exploitable wave capacity, 500GW easily exploitable wave energy could significantly influence the global energy transition. Wave energy can cover 10-20% of the future global electricity demand.

Wave energy offers several advantages in combination with other renewable energy sources. Due to its more consistent and predictable production profile, the wave can provide electrons to the grid when wind and solar cannot, making it a valuable addition to the renewable energy mix by reducing volatility and peak capacity in the system. Apart from densely populated coastal regions, wave energy can benefit remote locations and islands that rely on expensive Diesel generators for power generation. Despite its potential, wave energy has faced numerous challenges, including storm survivability, poor device efficiency, corrosion, etc. Innovative solutions, like those developed by CorPower Ocean, are needed to overcome these challenges and unlock the full potential of wave energy.

Wave energy – is generated by the movement of ocean waves created by the wind blowing across the water's surface. As the wind imparts its energy to the water, it creates waves that propagate over long distances across the ocean. Wave energy converters (WECs) capture this energy, converting the motion of the waves into electricity.

Several wave energy technologies exist, each with a unique design and approach to capturing wave energy. These technologies include point-absorbers, oscillating water columns (OWCs), attenuators, overtopping devices, and Salter's ducks.

Global wave energy potential.

The potential for wave energy is immense, with an estimated exploitable capacity of 1.8 terawatts (TW). However, it is essential to consider various factors when assessing this potential. These factors include the distance from the coastline, the impact on coastal alignment and protected areas, and competing ocean uses. Deductions are made for areas more than 30 miles away from the coast, difficult to extract due to wave direction and coastline alignment, occupied by shipping lanes, fishing areas, pipelines, and cables, or unsuitable seabed morphology and water depth. Additionally, areas with limited infrastructure availability, such as harbours and grid connections, are considered. To arrive at the easily exploitable potential of 500 GW, only areas with the highest energy density of over 30 kW/m are considered on top of the abovementioned factors.

It is important to note that not all regions are equally suitable for wave energy production. The most attractive areas are typically the exposed west coasts of the world, where long-period swell waves have been built up over several days by different weather systems and travelled uninterrupted across the oceans, carrying significant exploitable energy. Such regions include the Atlantic west coasts of Europe, North America, Australia, South America, and Africa. In these locations, wave energy is often independent of local wind conditions. It can provide a valuable energy supply when wind and solar photovoltaic sources are not producing or are limited. These regions hold the most tremendous potential for wave energy utilisation.

As the world seeks to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy sources, wave energy offers several advantages. It is a clean and abundant energy source with minimal greenhouse gas emissions and sizeable global potential. Wave energy can diversify the renewable energy mix, complementing other solar and wind power sources.

Wave energy has various potential applications, including grid-scale power generation, off-grid solutions, remote communities and islands, oil and gas platforms, and green hydrogen production. Wave energy can complement existing renewable sources for grid-scale power and contribute to a stable and diversified energy supply. Off-grid applications, such as remote communities and islands, can benefit from wave energy as a reliable and sustainable power source, reducing their reliance on diesel generators and imported fuels. Oil and gas platforms can also utilise wave energy for off-grid power, replacing gas generators to reduce operational costs. Furthermore, wave energy can produce green hydrogen for steel production, transportation, and energy storage sectors.

The development and deployment of wave energy technologies have the potential to create new jobs and stimulate economic growth in the renewable energy sector. With the global deployment of wave energy projects, there will be a demand for skilled professionals to design, build, operate, and maintain wave energy devices and infrastructure. It will lead to new job opportunities and foster the expansion of the renewable energy industry.

In a recent third-party techno-economic analysis of a 10 MW CorPower wave farm in Agucadoura (Portugal) with a lifetime of 20 years, the University of Edinburgh (UDEIN) found it could generate 2.79 €/MW in Gross Value Add (GVA) and 54.27 job years supported, strengthening the local supply chain and helping create a new local wave energy industry. Potential job creation is massive when scaling up, with 480 FTEs created in 2030 at 600 MW deployed and 24,000 FTEs in 2050 at 30 GW, as examples.

CorPower Ocean's wave energy technology.

CorPower Ocean is revolutionising the wave energy industry with its innovative and advanced?wave energy converter (WEC) technology.?The company's unique approach to harnessing the power of ocean waves has the potential to make wave energy a viable and sustainable source of renewable energy, capable of contributing significantly to the global energy mix.?

At the heart of CorPower Ocean's WEC is a sophisticated control system that uses advanced algorithms to optimise the device's response to incoming waves. This control system, coupled with a high-performance power take-off (PTO) system, is responsible for converting the mechanical energy generated by the oscillating body into electrical energy. By synchronising the motion of the WEC with the incoming waves, the control system and PTO work together to maximise energy capture and conversion efficiency, resulting in higher power output.

Designers make the PTO system robust and reliable, guaranteeing consistent performance in the harsh and unpredictable ocean environment. The compact and modular design makes maintenance and replacement easy, which reduces downtime and operational costs.

CorPower Ocean constructs its WEC using high-quality materials selected for their durability and resistance to corrosion and fouling. These materials contribute to the device's long-term reliability and performance, reduce maintenance needs, and prolong its operational lifetime.

To ensure the optimal performance and reliability of its WECs, CorPower Ocean has developed an integrated monitoring and diagnostics system that continuously collects and analyses data from the device. This system allows for real-time performance monitoring, enabling the early detection of potential issues and facilitating proactive maintenance and repairs.

The monitoring and diagnostics system also provides valuable data for ongoing research and development efforts, helping CorPower Ocean to refine its technology and improve the efficiency and performance of its wave energy devices. CorPower Ocean has developed innovative deployment and installation strategies for its WECs, aiming to minimise wave energy projects' costs and environmental impacts. The company's modular and scalable design allows for the efficient deployment of multiple devices in an array configuration, reducing the need for extensive infrastructure and making the most of available resources.

Additionally, CorPower Ocean has developed a low-impact anchoring system, the UMACK anchor, that minimises the disturbance to the seabed and marine ecosystems. This system also allows for easy installation and removal of the devices, further reducing the environmental footprint of wave energy projects.

CorPower Ocean's C4 Wave Energy Converter.

CorPower Ocean is a leading wave energy technology company that has developed a unique and innovative wave energy converter (WEC) to harness the power of ocean waves and convert it into clean, renewable electricity. With its focus on efficiency, scalability, and environmental sustainability, CorPower Ocean's solution aims to overcome the challenges that have historically plagued the wave energy industry.?

CorPower WEC is of the Point Absorber type, rated at 300-350 kW. It has a heaving composite buoy at the ocean surface that harnesses energy from ocean waves. The buoy is connected to the seabed using an innovative and proprietary universal mooring, anchor, and connectivity kit (UMACK).

CorPower uses a unique phase control technology that allows the WEC to be tuned and detuned, altering the system's response to ocean conditions. In operational tuned mode, phase control makes the device oscillate in phase with incoming waves, strongly amplifying the WEC's motion and, thereby, the power capture. In storms, the detuned state makes the WEC transparent to incoming waves for enhanced survivability, similar to the blade-pitching function in wind turbines for protecting them from overloading.

This combination allows for a large amount of energy to be harvested using a relatively small and low-cost device, delivering a structural efficiency of 8 MWh/tonne – Such output represents as much as a 5x improvement in structural efficiency over competing state-of-the-art WECs. Compact and lightweight WEC devices produce in volumes efficiently, install, operate, and maintain in modular multi-device CorPacks using low-cost vessels. This improves uptime, increases availability for a higher annual energy production (AEP) and capacity factor (%), and significantly reduces operational costs (OPEX).

Altogether, this step-change improvement in power delivery per mass maximises the energy output and survivability of the CorPower WEC, with verified metrics underpinning a highly competitive LCOE curve—overcoming the main challenges that precluded wave energy from scaling up historically.

CorPower Ocean is committed to minimising the environmental impacts of its wave energy devices. It works closely with regulators, stakeholders, and the scientific community to ensure its projects adhere to the highest ecological standards.

For instance, CorPower WEC composite hulls can be produced locally at customers' sites with a unique mobile factory concept developed and operated by CorPower, with low cost and minimum GHG emissions from transport and logistics.

To mention a mitigation action, an environmentally friendly installation method for the UMACK anchor installation has been developed. The low-noise "Vibro-driving" technique reduces noise by 15-20 dB compared to impact pile diving, with a vibration frequency of 20-40 Hz, to which marine mammals are less sensitive.

Regarding device size and cost-reduction potential, Corpower Ocean's insight is that using a few large building blocks is not necessarily better than using many small ones to create extensive systems. Modularity that allows doing one piece over and over again in an industrial mass manufacturing setup that achieves a higher degree of economies of scale and cycles of learning can, in many examples, be found to give a faster cost reduction potential compared to systems based on fewer very large units.

Module delivery concept

CorPower Ocean's modular approach to wave farms is based on high-density clustering involving many small identical units, such as the C4 Wave Energy Converter (WEC), rather than single, giant machines. A 10MW 'CorPack' wave cluster consists of 28 WEC units, 9m in diameter, with 150m spacing, delivering high power per ocean space.

This approach enables volume manufacturing methods and economies of scale to support a significantly competitive cost curve. A unique mobile factory cell concept allows for on-site fabrication of the composite hulls. At the same time, the relatively small dimensions of the WECs ensure engagement with local supply chains to fabricate subsystems.

As demonstrated in Viana do Castelo, local ports can further support on-land logistics with low-cost vessels for operations and maintenance. The delivery concept enables the rapid roll-out of the technology on a global scale, with high local content generating sustainable jobs and economic development for coastal communities in the regions.??

CorPower Ocean's innovative technologies are pushing the boundaries of wave energy technology, addressing the challenges of previous generations and paving the way for a more sustainable, efficient, and cost-effective future. As the wave energy sector continues to evolve, CorPower Ocean's groundbreaking technologies will play a crucial role in unlocking the full potential of this abundant and clean energy source.