The technology is designed to use existing infrastructure.
New Delhi: Eco Wave Power is an Israeli company which has revolutionised ocean wave energy technology, is now drawing attention of many countries, including those with which Israel currently has no diplomatic relations. These countries include regional players like Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
Now, Eco Wave Power has formally opened its demonstration project at the Jaffa Port with EDF Renewables Israel, its significant strategic partner.
The technology, designed to use existing infrastructure such as breakwaters, piers, and jetties, is mainly onshore or near shore. The only parts in contact with the water are large floaters, which move with the waves, setting in motion pistons and motors that turn electric generators.
Inna Braverman, the founder and CEO of Eco Wave Power says that this technology sets the company apart from the vast majority of wave energy projects built out at sea, at a high cost, and with stationary infrastructure unprotected against the might of the powerful ocean waves.
“They have struggled to deploy because of the price and survivability,” says Inna Braverman.
This is Israel’s first wave energy project to be connected to the grid with 100 kilowatts of installed capacity, capable of powering 100 homes. It is to demonstrate that the technology is functional and that the infrastructure doesn’t break down during storms as the floaters are raised above the water surface.
Additional 100-kilowatt demonstration projects are planned for ports in Los Angeles and Taiwan.
“The technology becomes profitable once it reaches megawatt scale,” said Braverman while talking to The Times of Israel. This will happen with what Eco Wave Power believes will be the world’s first commercial-scale wave power project that will be built in Porto, Portugal with a capacity of 20-megawatt project that will power 20,000 households.
Braverman hopes that the success of the Porto project would open the door to bank finance which is lacking as of now and has been an obstacle to major deployment.
Braverman says that another obstacle was regulatory as she noted, “It’s a new technology. Many countries want our technology but don’t have the policy, the legislative framework, or the feed-in tariff for wave energy.”
Noting approaches from national and commercial companies in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey, Braverman said it was interesting to see how the need for renewable energy technology “has no borders.”
Braverman said Eco Wave Power was 100% environmentally friendly because it was attached to existing structures and not embedded into the sea floor. It was modular, scaleable, the least intermittent renewable energy source, and had 832 times the wind’s kinetic energy.
Braverman co-founded the company in 2011 at the age of 24 with a Canadian businessman, David Leb.