A 1-megawatt floating buoy the size of a house will be tethered off Orkney and plugged into the UK grid for two years to prove that wave energy can work at commercial scale. Wave power has remained stuck in the prototype stage for decades. No device has yet generated enough electricity, reliably enough, to convince investors or grid operators that it is a serious technology. This project—called WEDUSEA—takes the existing OE Buoy design and subjects it to real Atlantic storms while measuring every aspect of its performance, moorings, power take-off, and environmental impact. The goal is to show that the cost of electricity from a single device can fall from €361 per megawatt-hour to €245 per megawatt-hour, a 32 percent reduction, and that a 20-megawatt array could generate power at €127 per megawatt-hour. If the demonstration succeeds, wave energy moves from a promising idea to a bankable technology. That could open the door to commercial arrays in UK and European waters, helping meet the 2030 target of 1 gigawatt of ocean energy. For the public, the impact would be invisible but structural: a new, predictable source of renewable electricity that complements wind and solar, and a supply chain for moorings, generators, and subsea cables that currently does not exist.
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WEDUSEA led by Irish Wave Energy Developer, Ocean Energy, will demonstrate a grid connected 1MW OE35 floating wave energy converter (known as the OE Buoy) at the European Marine Energy Test Site (EMEC) in Orkney, Scotland. This rigorous technical and environmental demonstration will happen over a 2 year period in Atlantic wave conditions with outcomes directly impacting policy, technical standards, public perception and investor confidence. The project will demonstrate that the technology is on a cost reduction trajectory in line with the EU SET Plan targets and will be a stepping stone to larger commercial array scale up and further industrialisation. The action will integrate sub components such as moorings and PTOs - improving efficiency, reliability, scalability, sustainability and circularity of the technology. The combined actions of the work programme are expected to reduce the LCOE for the technology from €361/MWh to €245/MWh, a 32% reduction. For a 20MW array the LCOE would reduce from €185/MWh to €127/MWh. The project has 3 clear phases, phase 1 the initial design phase leading into a Go/No Go, phase 2 Demonstration in which it is expected that the baseline device will generate in excess of 1,650 MWh over the deployment and Phase 3 Commercialisation and Dissemination which sees the capitalisation and exploitation of the results. Ocean Energy and other consortium companies will actively exploit the results through new innovations, products and services. The results will be disseminated to feed both environmental databases and IEC electrotechnical standards. This action will take wave energy beyond the state of the art, building on the partners experience in prior EU projects enabling arrays of reliable devices to achieve the 1GW target set out in the 2030 DG-ENER Offshore Renewable Energy Strategy. Planned engagement will create more public perception, empower and inform policy makers and de-risk larger scale investments to meet the 2050 targets.
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