The Danish company Wavepiston has installed two full-scale modules of its wave energy converter (WEC) at the Test Site of the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (PLOCAN). Their device allows the conversion of wave motion into electricity and desalinated water.
The access to the test site has been supported by the Blue-GIFT project, funded 75% by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), in the frame of the Interreg Atlantic Area program. Blue-GIFT will help Atlantic Area companies to test their next generation marine renewable energy (MRE) technologies in real sea environments and thus demonstrate that ocean energy is economically feasible.
The Blue-GIFT project will result in a minimum of eight pre-commercial demonstrations of floating wind, wave or tidal technologies, over 24,000 hours of operation, work with more than 20 small and medium enterprises (SME), creation of more than 30 jobs and will help to secure €15M investment into marine renewable energy (MRE) companies.
Wavepiston’s wave energy prototype was assembled in the Port of Las Palmas and towed to PLOCAN’s test area.
The system comprises a chain of wave energy collectors stretched between two anchored buoys. The plates of the collectors move when waves roll along the system, pumping pressurized sea water into a pipe leading to a turbine or a reverse osmosis system, in order to obtain energy or desalinated water.
The main characteristics of this technology are its flexible, robust and light structure, its modular design and its low impact on the marine environment.
Wavepiston is a Danish engineering company established in 2006. The concept of their technology has been tested in Aalborg University in 2010, as well as scale models of 1:9 in 2013 and 1:2 between 2015 and 2019 in the Danish North Sea.
In November 2020, Wavepiston launched a crowdfunding campaign with the intention to raise between 2 and 3 million euro for the final phase of the development and full-scale demonstration of their technology.
