Firms buoyed by wave energy awards

Renewables: Funds for two north companies

Two Inverness firms are among four companies chosen to share £2.84million to develop wave power devices.

AWS Ocean Energy and 4c Engineering were selected from eight applicants for the latest round of awards from Scottish Government-funded development body Wave Energy Scotland (WES).

Edinburgh company Mocean Energy and Checkmate Seaenergy, of Sheerness in Kent, will also receive further financial support from the Inverness-based organisation.

WES said projects by the four firms were the “most promising” of the eight funded in the first stage of its Novel Wave Energy Converter (NWEC) programme.

The organisation, a subsidiary of development agency Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), added that the money would be used by the firms to support “further design, modelling and testing of technologies.” AWS Ocean Energy will receive £721,265 to investigate “significant improvements to the economic performance” of its Archimedes Waveswing device. The £659,515 awarded to 4c Engineering will be used to continue development of its Sea Power Platform technology.

Mocean Energy’s WEC hinged raft project will get £729,984 and Checkmate Seaenergy’s Anaconda rubber bulge tube device £727,135.

The second stage of the NWEC programme is expected to run until autumn 2018. Once complete, the four companies will be able to apply for more funding to develop scaled prototypes of their devices for sea testing at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney.

WES managing director Tim Hurst said: “Our competitive technology development process aims to bring forward projects that will promote greater confidence in the technical performance of wave energy systems.

“This, of course, calls for very rigorous assessment and some difficult decisions about investment.

“I am pleased to confirm our further support for these four projects through to the next stage of development and very much look forward to seeing how the project teams might further develop their wave energy converter designs.”

The NWEC programme is one of a series of initiatives designed by WES to help commercialise the wave energy sector in Scotland.

The latest funding announcement brings the total investment by the organisation to £24.6million across 56 projects in just over two years.

“Further design, modelling and testing of technologies”

SEA TRIALS: A wave energy device is scrutinised for its effectiveness as it is tested off the coast of Orkney