Edinburgh-based Mocean Energy has secured major new investment to accelerate the commercialisation of its ground-breaking wave energy technology. The company has raised £612,000 equity seed funding plus £250,000 from Innovate UK to advance the design of its Blue Star wave machine and drive its adoption in subsea oil and gas.
Mocean Energy’s funding round has been led by business angel syndicate Equity Gap and includes investment by Old College Capital, the University of Edinburgh’s in-house venture investment fund, and the Scottish Investment Bank, the investment arm of Scottish Enterprise. The equity funding unlocks a further £250,000 from Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency.
Mocean Energy managing director Cameron McNatt said: “Our goal is to produce a commercially-available wave machine that can deliver low carbon power for tie backs and future fleets of autonomous autonomous underwater vehicles] (AUVs).”
To do this, Mr McNatt has worked alongside company co-founder Chris Retzler to build a 12-strong engineering team adopting cutting-edge thinking in using numerical modelling coupled with AI-optimisation to design its ‘state of the art’ wave machine.
He continued: “Blue Star has been created from first principles to operate autonomously in remote locations and deliver ‘green energy’ for a range of applications – including scientific ocean monitoring, aquaculture, oil and gas, and delivering energy to remote communities.
“We are currently working with firms in the Scottish supply chain to build and deliver our first prototype, which will commence testing at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney next year.
“The Innovate UK grant will enable us to advance our engineering design, including a new power take off, moorings and umbilical, and will deliver additional grant support to our project partners Newcastle University’s Electrical Power Research Group and Rosyth-based electronics-specialists Supply Design.
Mr McNatt added: “The equity funding is a tremendous boost and underscores our ambition to deliver a commercial product. As well as supporting our technology development pathway, this will allow us to create two new full-time posts which will bring an increased focus on finding the right kind of industry partners to drive our commercialisation goals.
“Crucially, it also brings on board three new non-executive board members who bring a wealth of experience to help us deliver our vision.”
Equity Gap director Fraser Lusty said: “Mocean Energy has an exciting technology backed by some very sound science and is ideally placed to help the oil and gas sector decarbonise its operations, with other world-wide applications to follow.
“This funding allows them to broaden their team and seek well-aligned commercial partners who can bring offshore experience to accelerate their ambitious plans.”
Kerry Sharp, director of the Scottish Investment Bank, said: “Bold and ambitious low-carbon technology companies like Mocean Energy are fundamental to Scotland’s transition to a net-zero emission economy. This latest injection of funding, alongside the significant Innovate UK funding, will allow the team at Mocean to move ever closer to fully commercialising their ground-breaking wave power technology.”
Earlier this year Mocean Energy announced a pilot project with the Oil and Gas Technology Centre (OGTC), oil major Chrysaor and subsea specialists EC-OG and Modus to study the potential to use their Blue Star prototype to power a subsea battery and a remote underwater vehicle.
Mocean Energy previously secured £3.3 million last year from Wave Energy Scotland to build and test a half-scale version of its technology at sea — the device is currently being completed at AJS Fabrication based at Cowdenbeath in Fife.