Offshore staff
EDINBURGH, UK – Mocean Energy has secured funding to help speed up commercialization of its wave energy technology for the subsea oil and gas and other markets.
The start-up company has raised £612,000 ($812,000) equity seed funding plus £250,000 ($332,000) from innovation agency Innovate UK to advance design of its Blue Star wave machine.
Backers include Old College Capital, the University of Edinburgh’s in-house venture investment fund, and the Scottish Investment Bank (the investment arm of Scottish Enterprise).
“Our goal is to produce a commercially-available wave machine which can deliver low carbon power for tiebacks and future fleets of autonomous AUVs,” said Mocean Energy managing director Cameron McNatt.
The company is currently working on use of numerical modeling coupled with AI-optimization to design the wave machine.
“Blue Star has been created from first principles to operate autonomously in remote locations and deliver green energy for a range of applications – including scientific ocean monitoring, aquaculture, oil and gas, and delivering energy to remote communities,” McNatt explained.
“We are currently working with firms in the Scottish supply chain to build and deliver our first prototype, which will commence testing at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney next year.
“The Innovate UK grant will enable us to advance our engineering design, including a new power take off, moorings and umbilical, and will deliver additional grant support to our project partners Newcastle University’s Electrical Power Research Group and Rosyth-based electronics-specialists Supply Design.”
Earlier this year Mocean Energy announced a pilot project with the Oil and Gas Technology Centre in Aberdeen, UK E&P independent Chrysaor and subsea specialists EC-OG and Modus to study the potential of a Blue Star prototype to power a subsea battery and a remote underwater vehicle.
Last year, the company attracted £3.3 million ($4.38 million) of funding from Wave Energy Scotland to build and test a half-scale version of the technology at sea. The device is currently being completed at AJS Fabrication at Cowdenbeath, eastern Scotland.
11/18/2020
