Fortum Corporation, headquartered in Espoo, Finland, is now the newest member of Ocean Energy Europe.
Fortum is participating in three strategically diverse wave power demo projects. The first one, implemented in France, uses AW Energy’s WaveRoller™ technology. Fortum will be responsible for the project development and will be the owner of the demonstration park, while DCNS will manage the site development and construction work.
For the second project, a full-scale wave power plant, Swedish Energy Agency awarded an investment grant to Fortum and the Swedish wave energy converter manufacturer Seabased. The first phase of construction work for the wave power demonstration plant will be grid connected in summer 2015in Smögen, Sotenäs, in western Sweden.
Fortum has also signed a leasing agreement with Wave Hub, in the UK to test wave power solutions off the coast of Cornwall. The wave power solution that Fortum is planning to be deploy at the site is the ‘Penguin’, owned by Finnish company Wello.
“We are delighted that Fortum has chosen to join Ocean Energy Europe. Fortum brings a huge amount of expertise and experience to the table and their involvement is clearly indicative of sector’s continual march towards commercialisation. We will look forward to working with them in the coming years,” said Rémi Gruet, CEO Ocean Energy Europe .
“In recent years, Fortum has been participating in new wave power technology demonstration projects in Europe. We believe that this industry can only become successful by through co-operation. Ocean Energy Europe was us a natural choice by offering us an active link between wave power industry, research organisations and EU institutions,” said Dr. Heli Antila, Chief Technology Officer at Fortum.
Image: Fortum