In the meantime, Tamminen, who architected California’s wildly successful Million Solar Roofs initiative for former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), pitched the state Legislature on supporting ocean power through the early stages of development. Sacramento agreed and in 2023 passed SB 605, which instructed state officials to study new incentives for nascent wave-based technologies.
“We’re trying to use California’s size as the world’s fourth-largest economy to get these blue technologies scaled up, and that makes it faster, better, cheaper for everybody,” Tamminen said.
The California Energy Commission published a study on the pros and cons of wave power in July 2024, which could lay the groundwork for more supportive policies in the future.
A different kind of wave power
If wave power can scale, it would be one of the precious few new electricity sources that have appeared on the scene since the rise of wind and solar. Next-generation nuclear designs have yet to send any power to the U.S. grid after years of effort and investment. Perhaps the closest thing to a new arrival is Fervo Energy’s advanced geothermal, which is operating in a 3.5-megawatt commercial project in Nevada.
Worldwide, ocean power ventures have failed in spectacular fashion. Harnessing Neptune’s wrath makes intuitive sense to many landlubbers: There’s so much energy out there, why not use it? Analysts at the International Energy Agency calculated that ocean and tidal energy could more than serve global power demand, if only it could be collected.
The problem, as Odysseus learned long ago, is that Poseidon does not submit to the will of mortals. The list of ocean energy installations that broke and sank upon contact with waves is long and amusing to those who didn’t dedicate years of painstaking labor and millions of dollars to the doomed endeavors. And energy options don’t exist in a vacuum: Wave power, with all the costs to fortify it against the ocean itself, must compete with mass-manufactured solar panels to produce the exact same commodity, electricity.
Braverman is well aware of wave energy’s soggy past and the money wasted on contraptions “that ended up broken to pieces on the shoreline.” Her diagnosis of the field’s misfires informs both the technological and the business strategy at Eco Wave Power.
The firm’s design favors simplicity across the board. Others tried installing out at sea, where waves are more powerful, but they rack up costs for ships and specialist divers, and then suffer from the same powerful waves they try to harness. Instead, Eco Wave Power focuses on far more accessible seawalls and jetties, and absorbs the waves with welded steel pontoons while the sensitive power conversion equipment sits safely on land nearby.
Financially, Braverman strives to prove a lot while spending very little. The company raised about $30 million from venture capitalists and from going public, first in Sweden and now on the Nasdaq, where it boasts a market cap of $51 million.
Eco Wave Power employs 15 people, and contracts out welding and installation to local firms. Braverman found strategic partners to share the cost of early installations — international energy company EDF invested in the 100-kilowatt Jaffa project, which began exporting to the Israeli grid in August 2023, and Shell Marine Renewable Energy co-invested in the LA system.
Last year, Eco Wave Power burned just $2 million, Braverman noted, and ended the first half of this year with $8 million in the bank. That demonstrates a refreshing asceticism compared to other cleantech startups that have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, built factories for novel energy products, and then gone out of business. (Natron, a sodium-ion battery company, seems to be the latest to follow this arc.)
Still, financial discipline only matters here in service of generating clean power from the ocean. After delivering one project this year, Braverman expects to clinch three installations next year, in Taiwan, India, and Portugal. The commercial performance at Porto, with the company’s own money on the line, will become key evidence to persuade banks to lend money for future expansions of this singular technology.
The raging surf hasn’t killed this idea yet, but it still has to placate the gods of finance.
Great Job Julian Spector & the Team @ Canary Media Source link for sharing this story.
