CorPower awarded 10-year marine licence

Miguel Silva, country manager of CorPower Ocean, said the Portuguese permit unlocks the demonstration phase of the flagship HiWave-5 project and paves the way for a new class of high efficiency Wave Energy Converter (WEC) products between 2020 and 2024.

“CorPower has reached a series of milestones throughout 2020 and the TUPEM licence is another significant step forward,” Mr Silva said. “This permit allows us to kickstart the final phases of our demonstration work in the Atlantic Ocean, which will test our next generation WECs within the most aggressive and challenging maritime conditions.”

Awarded by Portugal’s Directorate-General for Natural Resources (DGRM), the TUPEM license provides a ‘Permit for the Private Use of the Maritime Space’ up to 12 miles off the coast of Aguçadoura in northern Portugal.

The HiWave-5 project is designed to prove the survivability, performance and economics of a grid-connected array consisting of four full scale devices, with type certification from DNV-GL.

The CorPower WEC features a heaving buoy on the surface that absorbs energy from ocean waves and is connected to the seabed using a tensioned mooring line. Novel phase control technology makes the compact device oscillate in resonance with the incoming waves, strongly amplifying the motion and power capture. The high structural efficiency allows for a large amount of energy to be harvested using a relatively small and low-cost device, providing competitive cost of energy.