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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NextWave (Wave Energy Technology Made Mainstream)

Teaser

Summary

Today, renewable sources produce almost a quarter of the worldâ€™s electricity however their affordability, stability and scalability are not fully established. Wave power can generate electricity around the clock, decreasing the need for energy-storage systems and making it easier to integrate into the grid than variable solar and wind power. However, wave energy has remained relatively expensive and hard to capture. While a range of wave technologies and devices have been demonstrated through pilot projects, they are still in pre-commercial development stage. Seabased is the first company to deliver turnkey wave energy parks with a competitive electricity generation costs compared to solar or wind or even legacy fossil-fuel based technologies in many places around the world. Our wave parks at their current stage are the product of over 15 years of research and development culminated in over 100 patents in 20 different patent families in multiple jurisdictions. We have developed entire wave energy park systems from buoy to generator to the grid connection and the manufacturing processes that enable cost-competitiveness. Our SotenÃ¤s Wave Energy Park on the Swedish west coast has successfully connected to the Nordic Grid and delivered electricity. In order to preserve our competitive advantage, through the Next Wave project, we will further improve our system capacity & efficiency by our technical optimization, reduce our manufacturing costs via value-chain optimization, and, provide performance guarantees through our system type certification. In our feasibility study, we adjust our technical/ commercial readiness strategy to reflect on this, we prepare a detailed plan to advance our system which is currently at TRL-7 to TRL-9 and produce the final commercial ready design of our system.

Work performed

First, we explain our work towards evaluating the technical feasibility of Next Wave. We elaborate the required technical development plan to further improve the electrical Grid Connection System and the Sea Level Compensator (used to be called Tidal Compensator System) of our current wave park design to obtain the final commercial ready design which will have significantly higher electricity production capacity. To this end, we are preparing a new test bench and production facility in Brevik, Norway to accelerate the system validation and mechanical optimization of the final design. Furthermore, we present parts of our industrialization plan such as international certification plan of various components of our wave energy parks by a globally recognized 3rd part certifier (such as DNV GL) and preparation of our own standard wave park project proposal following the industry standard yellow book by FIDIC. We elaborate on our value chain optimization program to reduce manufacturing costs focus on the new facilities needed to meet market demand at the end of the Next Wave project. We present a detailed work plan summarizing our work packages and project schedule

We also evaluate the commercial viability of Next Wave. We present a brief analysis of the global renewables power market including trends, main drivers, geographical segmentation, and, the place of ocean/marine power within this market seascape. We discuss levelized cost of energy of our own wave energy park and compare with a number of conventional and renewable sources of energy. We identify visible opportunities for our wave energy parks within ocean power market. We steer our analysis towards the European market and especially the emerging/developing nations market segments with a focus on small and developing island states. Next, we present our commercial viability including needs of our customers, size of our potential market opportunity, our sales strategy and market traction. We analyze our immediate competitors and describe our commercial strategy. We also include activities in the near future and our sales channels to reach potential customers and adjust our commercialization strategy accordingly. We present the description of our other close to market activities such as dissemination and we conclude with detailed patent search regarding our innovations that confirmed our freedom to operate while commercializing the Next Wave project.

Finally, we assess the financial viability of the project and our company. Here we present our financial plan including evaluation of total investment, analysis of cash-flow and revenues in the next 5 years in alignment with our commercial strategy, fund rising strategies to support growth, definition of operational costs and employee profiles needed for company escalation, the budget required for Next Wave to achieve the desired impact on the growth of the Seabased company, and a full cost/benefit analysis projecting the return of investment. We then provide our business plan summarizing key drivers that will foster market penetration of our wave parks, competitive advantages of our innovation, our short-term strategy and log-term vision.

In the end, we summarize main technical, commercial and financial barriers against ocean power, we present SWOT analyses of our company, and, identify key risks and possible remedies for the Next Wave project.

Final results

Through the Next Wave project, we will further optimize our current precommercial wave energy park design (which is at TRL 7) and advance it to final commercial deployment ready state (TRL 9). We will significantly improve the electricity generation capacity of our wave energy parks while reducing our production costs. This will allow us to expand into new markets, boost our growth and increase our workforce. Generating electricity from the ocean power doesnâ€™t generate any greenhouse gases, unlike combined-cycle generators, or coal powerplant, thus our wave parks will also accompany global decarbonization trend. Our wave energy parks are also ecologically friendly, involve no pollutants or blades which may harm the environment or wildlife, creates artificial reefs for wildlife protection and almost invisible from the shore. Approximately a billion people live off the grid without electricity. With its modularity, our system can provide immediate energy access to underserved coastal/island communities, and can be expanded gradually as the needs of such communities grow. Having carefully analysed all technical, commercial, and financial aspects, we confirm that the Next Wave is a breakthrough project. Hence, we will further invest in the Next Wave and we will seek Phase-2 grant support from the Horizon 2020 program through SME instrument.