Irish firm wins €1.83m US contract

Irish company Wavebob Ltd has secured a grant of $2.4m (€1.83m) from the US Department of Energy to prepare for a commercial-scale wave energy demonstration project planned for US waters in 2013.

Bord Gáis is to invest €1.8m in Wavebob Ltd, bringing the total investments to €3.6m .

The grant forms part of $37m in marine and hydrokinetic energy grants announced by the US Department.

It will be used to further develop Wavebob Ltd.’s wave energy converter (WEC), which is currently in pre-commercial development.

At full scale, the device is capable of producing in excess of one megawatt of energy with average output of over 500kW at sites in the North Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The ‘Wavebob’ was one of the first WEC’s in the world to successfully produce electricity from ocean swell in 2007.