Category(s):
Budget:
To Be Determined
Project Duration:
6 Month(s)
Description
Request for Solution:
Currently, we are looking for an investment partner to cover around 30-40% costs of a European project. The project proposal has been submitted for a funding call announced by the Eurogia association (https://eurogia.eu/). This funding call has two stages. The project proposal has been approved in the first stage and project partners are going to apply for the second stage of the call which will be announced on Nov. 2023. Eight partners (one university, two large companies and five SMEs) across the EU are going to collaborate in this project. The overall budget of the project is around 4.4 Million € and the associated budget for the Wave To Energy company is around 530,000 €. The Portuguese government will finance around 60-70% of the project costs in the form of grants. So, we are looking for a partner who can provide the supplementary part of the project budget (around 160,000 to 212,000 €). The investment partner might acquire a certain portion of the shares of the Wave To Energy company in exchange of the capital they invested in (Equity financing).
Brief description of the Eurogia project proposal:
“Increasing global energy demands requires a special attention to implement the ocean renewable energy extracting technologies. The wave energy harvesting technologies have not been developed extensively, mainly due to their poor efficiency, although a tremendous amount of wave energy is available specifically in the European coastlines and oceanic areas. A high energy production cost (due to the poor efficiency of Wave Energy Converters (WEC)) is the main barrier on the way of the commercial development of WEC devices. Hence, the main objective of this research and development proposal is to deal with this challenge by optimizing and scaling up the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of a novel concept of floating WEC device (devised recently by Rezanejad and Guedes Soares). This concept is expected to attain high levels of hydrodynamic performance in terms of capturing the energy of waves in the broad range of frequencies that leads to a significant reduction in energy production costs. Therefore, the outcome of this project is expected to make wave energy an economically viable solution to supply increasing energy demand in the world.
This new technology is Dual Chamber Floating Oscillating Water Column (FOWC) device which its conceptual design has been depicted in the attached picture. The system has two chambers in the rear and fore part of the device. Each of the chambers works like an Oscillating Water Column (OWC) device that converts energy of waves into the pneumatic power. The pneumatic power is then converted to the electrical energy through using two air turbines in the rear and fore chambers. This system has the unique capability to store the produced energy on-board of itself in the form of Green Hydrogen. Other existing technologies of WECs in the market do not have such a capability due to their basic design limitations. In the case of storing the energy using Hydrogen, the need to transmit the energy using underwater cables will be eliminated that can substantially reduce Capital Expenditure Costs (CAPEX). Hence, it leads to further reductions in clean energy costs and therefore the application of Wave Energy Converters can be further promoted.
The main objective of this project is to scale up the TRL stage of this promising technology that allows producing Green Hydrogen from wave energy with free energy. It is planned to design, manufacture and demonstrate a system that is capable of passively converting waves to electrical power, that creates locally Hydrogen and stores it inside the internal tanks. The Hydrogen is then regularly collected by ships and could directly be used by the shipping companies (as their clean fuel) or could be used in other offshore sectors that require Hydrogen or even can be brought to shore to fuel the Hydrogen economy. The locally produced Hydrogen is stored offshore, and with digital communication, the storage capacity can be remotely monitored for collection or direct sale to authorised ships. The stations could operate as unmanned floating clean fuel stations for many types of ships, ocean observation monitoring systems and offshore aquaculture units with its plug and play solutions".
Brief description of Wave To Energy company:
The co-founders established the Frenesim das Ondas company (Registered trademark: Wave To Energy) in 2021 in Portugal and started an entrepreneurial initiative to work on renewable energy technologies with the digitally controlled subsystems. The startup showed a successful track record in securing multiple prizes and is currently receiving coaching training. Wave To Energy, is recognized among the top eight renewable energy startups in Lisbon, Portugal by F6S.com (https://www.f6s.com/companies/renewable-energy/portugal/lisbon/co). The startup received coaching from BlueInvest, an EU community that helps for Readiness Assistance packages to apply for EU funding in marine renewable energy. The startups is further receiving coaching and training from Go-SME, under Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnológico y la Innovación (CDTI-Spain), which coaches startups to be prepared for EU funding opportunities primarily from the European Innovation Council (EIC). The startup company is honored to be selected as one of the winners of the highly competitive Women TechEU funding prize that is offered by EU to support deep-tech start-ups led by women (CEO and one of the co-founders of the company is a highly talented woman having the PhD degree in the field of Mechanical Engineering from Instituto Superior Tecnico in Portugal). The provided funding will be implemented to undertake complementary tests to conclude the proof of concept investigations of the Wave Energy Converter (WEC) technology that is under development. Last but not least, we are honored that our startup company has been recognized as top 10 Renewable Energy Startups in the World by StartUs Insights (https://www.startus-insights.com/innovators-guide/renewable-energy-startups-to-watch/).
