CorPower Ocean has signed a development agreement with Equipmake, a company known for electrification technologies for the automotive, truck, bus and specialty vehicle industries.
Under the agreement, Equipmake will develop a bespoke generator and SiC (Silicon Carbide) inverter system, tailored to CorPower Ocean’s advanced wave energy system. It marks the first phase of a multi-year program designed to accelerate commercialization of CorPower Ocean’s wave energy technology.
Corpower Ocean’s CorPack wave energy clusters are intended to be used as “building blocks” to form larger wave farms from hundreds of megawatts to gigawatt in scale, the company says. CorPacks come in 10-30MW size, where electricity is harvested from an array of wave energy converters into a collection hub. Each hub delivers grid quality electricity with standard 33/66kV electrical connection commonly used in offshore wind.
“Our partnership with Equipmake represents a major step forward in the development of our next-generation generator and SiC inverter, further enhancing the performance and scalability of our wave energy systems,” said Patrik Möller, CEO, CorPower Ocean. “This agreement marks an important milestone in our journey towards delivering reliable, clean energy on a global scale.”
Equipmake is a UK-based industrial technology company specializing in the engineering, development and production of electrification products to meet the needs of the automotive and other sectors in support of the transition from fossil-fueled to zero-emission drivetrains. The company has developed a vertically integrated solution providing fully bespoke solutions to its customers.
Last month, CorPower Ocean announced it had secured financial backing from Vinnova, Sweden’s national innovation agency, to adopt AI and test its ability to drive performance and control in wave energy technology. The WACE (Wave energy AI-based Control Enhancement) Project is now underway and is set to run until November 2025. CorPower Ocean is being supported by project partner NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) – known for education, research, and innovation for engineering systems in the marine environment.
It came shortly after the Swedish tech developer secured EUR 32 million ($34.5 million USD) Series B funding to support the commercial roll out of its technology meant to move wave energy towards a bankable mainstream energy source. The investment followed CorPower Ocean’s commercial scale C4 device surviving the “largest Atlantic storms on record” while efficiently generating power in regular ocean conditions.
Wave farm projects are being developed by customers using CorPower Ocean’s technology along the Atlantic Arc, including sites in Scotland, Ireland, Portugal and Norway. One project is being developed by Ireland’s state-owned energy supplier, ESB, off the coast of County Clare, following two decades of investigating a wide variety of technologies. The pre-commercial phase of the Saoirse Wave project, will involve CorPower Ocean WECs (Wave Energy Converters) as part of a CorPack cluster.
