Swedish wave power company Ocean Harvesting Technologies (OHT) has become member of Norway’s GCE Ocean Technology.
Since 2017, the Swedish company has been focusing on InfinityWEC. Each individual wave power plant can produce up to 500 kW of average power and 2 GWh annually, and will be included in wave farms of 100-500 MW.
“There is a great opportunity for wave power to provide renewable energy to oil rigs, fish farms and shipping in Norway ,” says founder and CEO Mikael Sidenmark .
OHT is currently performing a case study for a 100 MW wave farm, consisting of 200 InfinityWEC units arranged in 10 clusters of 20 WEC units. A flywheel energy storage is located in each cluster substation to smooth the collected power to a constant and predictable output power.
“Using energy storage to smooth wave power is necessary for most applications, except maybe hydrogen production, since the collected power varies considerably even from a large number of WEC units ,” Sidenmark explains. “Flywheel energy storage is the ideal choice for us since we require high power and a high number of charge / discharge cycles. It is also very suitable for offshore installations due to its maintenance free operation,” he adds.
OHT has a small specialised team driving technology development, the innovation process, the securing of IP, strategic partnerships, business development and project financing.
System integration, engineering and supply chain management is performed by partner Sigma Energy & Marine in Gothenburg (formerly part of Aker Solutions). They also have industrial partnerships with key suppliers NSK (ball screw actuators), Bosch Rexroth (Pneumatic pre-tension system) and Teraloop (Flywheel energy storage).
Expectations and Contribution to GCE Ocean Technology
Even though Norway produces almost all its energy to the grid through hydro power, it offers one of the best opportunities for wave power in the world. This is due to the excellent wave climate and the plans to provide renewable energy instead of fossil fuels to run oil rigs, fish farms and ships according to Sidenmark.
“We are looking for strategic suppliers and customers for our InfinityWEC system in these offshore segments and also, investors to help us accelerate the commercialisation of our technology,” states Sidenmark.