Finland’s Wello Oy (www.ello.eu) has launched the latest version of its Penguin wave energy converter —WEC2 — into the water in Tallinn (Estonia), ready to be towed to the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney, where it will be deployed alongside the original Penguin WEC as part of the CEFOW (Clean Energy From Ocean Waves) project.

Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, the CEFOW project aims to deploy an array of three Wello Penguins at EMEC’s grid-connected wave test site at Billia Croo, on the west coast of Orkney.

The first of the three Penguin WECs was successfully installed by local marine contractor Green Marine in April 2017 and has safely remained on site since then, surviving wave heights of over 18m.

The lessons learnt have been used in the development of WEC2, which has been optimised for power generation and built at the Netaman shipyard in Tallinn.

A bespoke sub-sea hub will connect the umbilical cables from each WEC to EMEC’s marine export cable, to feed power to EMEC’s onshore sub-station and on into the national grid.

The hub incorporates switchgear enabling one device to be disconnected while the other two continue generating.

A marine licence was granted in November for the installation and operation of the three-WEC array and the hub.

Caitlin Long, EMEC environment and consents specialist, said: “We are very pleased that the CEFOW project has been successful in securing consent for the first WEC array on a single electrical cable in Scotland.

“This gives us the go-ahead for the installation of the second Penguin WEC and the hub.”