Waveroller, an undersea power generator that harnesses wave power begins commercial operation.
Wave energy is the next natural, clean energy that man has been trying to harness for a long time. THE Finnish company AW-Energy is ready to start generating electricity with Waveroller technology.
It will generate 1 MW of electrical power from an undersea generator located on the ocean floor off Portugal.
The idea of implementation of machines Waveroller started in 1993 when a diver, inspired by the movement of a hatch from a shipwreck, he envisioned harnessing the power of waves to generate electricity.
So in 2019 the first commercial, industrial Waveroller was sunk, which was a 350 kW unit and successfully connected to the power grid off the Portuguese coast. Despite the precalls that exist in the harsh marine environment, when the unit was inspected two years later it was still reliable.
With this experience the company has been working diligently since 2020 on an EU-funded project to adapt the Waveroller for serial manufacturing and deployment in arrays called WaveFarms.
These WaveFarms, consisting of 10 to 24 Waveroller units, will sit on the seabed at a depth of between 8 and 12 meters, no more than 2 kilometers from the coast.
Each Waveroller is designed to produce 1 MW of peak power, and an annual output of between 624-813 MWh is estimated. The real change game, however, is the low cost of energy which puts Waveroller in an extremely competitive position, at $100-150 per MWh.
