Overview

Wave energy conversion has been challenging engineers and scientists for several decades. Pioneering work was initiated in the late ‘70’s in response to the oil crisis and continued into the early 80’s. Research and development at Edinburgh University by Stephen Salter and elsewhere by others produced a number of inventions, but unfortunately government support was removed and with the privatisation of the electricity markets and a decade of low energy prices, further progress was limited. The growth in demand for renewable energy sources saw work on wave power re-start in the late 1990’s and there are now over 50 teams working on wave energy across the globe. AWS Ocean Energy is one of the few who have reached any serious scale or attracted major investment.

We believe that, through the evolution of our wave power device, we have one of the best solutions in terms of potential economics, reliability, safety and power density. Our first key objective is to demonstrate and prove this technology at commercial scale.

However, we also believe that commercial success will come through focussed research to develop next generation technologies and this forms an essential plank of our Technology Strategy. We have several exciting technology initiatives at early stage and are currently progressing these. We are disciplined in separating research from the delivery of projects, whilst ensuring that essential information and learning is shared between teams, as appropriate.