The Ocean Harvester has so far been successfully validated through a land based test rig, extensive computer simulations and water laboratory tests. The results are very promising and have proven the power smoothing capabilities, good behaviour and survivability in extreme wave conditions and no entanglement between mooring and counterweight lines.

On-going phase

In the on-going phase, a 25 kW device is constructed for a full scale sea trial in Hanöbukten in southern Sweden. The design of the device is underway, construction will be started Q4 2010, the deployment in to the ocean is planned in Q1 2011 and testing will continue throughout 2011. The surface area of the buoy is approx. 35 m2 with a weight of approx. 18 ton incl. counterweight. The purpose of this test is to verify survivability and system functionality in the ocean environment, measure performance (i.e. power output and power smoothing), prove the concept and gain reference data for continued development.

Going forward

In the next phase a pilot plant with approx. 6 wave energy converters will be installed, linked together and connected to the power grid. In this phase the design will be optimized based on the results from the sea trials with the first model and the capacity of each device will be increased to approx. 100 kW. Advanced simulations will be used to optimize the design parameters to increase the performance and reduce the cost of components.

By 2014-2015 the Ocean Harvester will be ready for a first small scale commercial wave farm installation with an annual production capacity of approx. 25 GWh. Such a wave farm would consist of 50 wave energy converters, each with a capacity of 100 kW. The wave farm will be fully owned by one or more customers.