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Wave energy developer, Aquamarine Power has closed the first round of its fundraising to raise £10 million from investors based in the UK and Ireland.
The proceeds of the fundraising will be used to fund the testing program and for general working capital purposes.
This follows the announcement last month that a full scale demonstrator of Aquamarine’s Oyster wave energy converter has now been successfully deployed at its testing berth at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney, on schedule and within forecast costs.
Work is currently ongoing to connect Oyster to sub-sea pipelines which will deliver high pressure fresh water to an onshore turbine. It is scheduled to begin generating power to enable full scale offshore testing to begin later this year. Testing is expected to take up to two years.
The Oyster system consists of a hinged flap connected to the seabed at around 10m depth. Each passing wave moves the flap which drives a hydraulic piston to deliver high pressure water to an onshore turbine which generates electricity.
The proceeds of the fundraising will be used to fund the testing program and for general working capital purposes.
Aquamarine has a total funding requirement of approximately £50 million to take Oyster through to commercialization. This will be raised in stages, with a second fundraising round due to commence shortly. Aquamarine expects to have a fully commissioned commercially available wave farm in place by 2014.
Aquamarine already has an agreement in place with Airtricity, the renewable energy division of Scottish and Southern Energy to develop up to 1,000 megawatts (MW) of marine energy sites by 2020 using Oyster technology.
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