Edinburgh-based Mocean Energy (www.moceanenergy.com) and Inverness-based AWS Ocean Energy (www.awsocean.com) have been awarded £7.7 million by Wave Energy Scotland to build half-scale wave-energy devices and test them at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney.

This is expected to lead to the technologies being developed at full scale in the years ahead.

Mocean’s Blue Horizon is a floating hinged structure, while AWS has named its fully submerged point absorber the Archimedes Waveswing (pictured).

Tim Hurst, Wave Energy Scotland’s managing director, said: “These ‘state of the art’ designs represent the most advanced and innovative devices in the UK today, and our programme is ensuring that Scotland stays ‘front and centre’ of the global wave-energy story.

Both devices have proved their suitability during tank testing and in modelling, so the next step is to test them in real-sea conditions.

"This funding will allow both companies to further develop their designs before building and testing the prototypes in Orkney in 2020, where marine engineering expertise is plentiful. EMEC will provide the specialist technical support needed to assess the devices’ performance.”

The winning designs were selected via a rigorous assessment procedure, where Wave Energy Scotland staff and independent experts worked through a wide set of criteria to evaluate each submission.

The Scottish government established Wave Energy Scotland in 2014, with the goal of creating a wave-energy industry. It has since provided more than £30 million towards the development of commercially viable wave-energy technologies and sub-systems.

Mr Hurst said: “We have seen these projects develop from promising concepts into mature well-developed technologies with excellent performance.

“Both projects will use sub-systems technology developed independently in the Wave Energy Scotland programme.”