Ocean Power Technologies’ PB3 PowerBuoy has produced more than 1MWhr of energy to date, having been deployed in the Adriatic Sea for six months.

Operating continuously and error-free while being controlled remotely. OPT’s PowerBuoy is part of Eni’s MaREnergy project to demonstrate the suitability of wave-energy technologies for the oil and gas industry.

George Kirby, OPT’s president and CEO (www.oceanpowertechnologies.com), said: “Since the contract began in March of last year, OPT and Eni have been collaborating as a part of the Clean Sea initiative, and several important milestones have been reached with the PowerBuoy.

“It has been extremely reliable and demonstrated flexibility across a variety of applications.

“This on-going successful project with Eni makes it clear that the PB3 PowerBuoy could be a valuable tool for a broad range of offshore oil and gas exploration and production operations, including charging underwater unmanned vehicles, well monitoring, asset inspection and decommissioning.”

The PowerBuoy was selected by Eni’s integrated sub-sea technology systems team to develop applications for remotely controlled field operations powered by wave energy, including environmental monitoring and offshore asset inspection with autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).

It demonstrated its AUV-charging capabilities during the recent trials with Eni, sending power and communications to a sub-sea payload throughout the test period.