In the week since Mocean Energy launched its campaign on Crowdcube, Europe’s largest private market investment platform, it has already raised £386,770 ($486,380) of its £900,000 ($1,131,790) goal. However, the campaign notes that the Crowdcube round is part of a wider round in which £330,311 had already been secured by the company. The campaign is meant to finance the next phase of the company’s growth plans as it looks to mature its technology, moving from the research and development (R&D) and prototype phase to technology commercialization and internationalization.
To date, Mocean Energy has received support from investors including Katapult Ocean, MOL, Equity Gap, TotalEnergies, Shell – Marine Renewable Program, and Wave Energy Scotland.
Mocean Energy’s technology utilizes wave, solar, and battery storage to deliver renewable power and communications. The company has already demonstrated its wave and solar-powered Blue X wave energy converter prototype – which can be paired with battery storage to deliver green power – through the Renewables for Subsea Power program, and customer projects are now underway investigating the deployment of its commercial product, Blue Star, the company said.
The company originally unveiled its Blue X wave energy prototype in 2021. Last year, the company secured over £3 million (US$3.7 million) in EU funding to develop and deploy a 250 kW wave energy device in Orkney, Scotland; in addition to securing £2.2 million (US$2.6 million) in new equity alongside a £500,000 ($612,000) grant to drive the commercialization of its wave energy technologies.
The Blue Horizon 250 device will be manufactured in Scotland and deployed in a grid-connected berth at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney as early as 2025. It’s hoped the project could pave the way to a small wave farm delivering 1 to 2 MW of low-carbon electricity by 2030. Blue Horizon 250 will be a significant scale-up from Blue X and is designed for commercial applications on islands and remote communities, while also including early grid projects and off-grid applications, such as oil and gas and aquaculture, according to a release.
Last summer, Mocean Energy and offshore energy firm Aker Solutions Subsea announced they would explore how locally generated wave energy could extend the lifetime of existing oil and gas hubs. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaborate on wave energy conversion and subsea-integrated solutions to develop a means of powering subsea infrastructure. The partners will undertake feasibility studies for wave-powered tiebacks, aimed at identifying the most economically and environmentally efficient solutions to develop marginal reserves, especially in combination with energy storage.
