Cluster Insight with Ocean Harvesting

What if the ocean could deliver both the power and the storage? Swedish wave energy company Ocean Harvesting thinks it can, and Norway is where they want to prove it.

After 8 years of perfecting their wave energy converter InfinityWEC, Ocean Harvesting is now setting their sights on the Norwegian continental shelf, with a bold idea for turning CO₂ storage reservoirs into giant offshore batteries to balance offshore renewables into constant power supply for off-grid industrial applications.

In this edition of our Cluster Insight series, we speak with CEO Mikael Sidenmark about their wave power technology, why Norway is the market they are targeting, and the new energy-hub concept they're looking for Norwegian partners to help build.

1. What does your company do?

We develop marine renewable energy systems. Our core technology is InfinityWEC, a highly cost-efficient wave energy converter combining a ball-screw-based power take-off with an integrated flywheel energy storage system (FESS), and a buoy made from high-performance concrete and EPS.

The integrated energy storage enables advanced model-predictive phase control (MPC) to increase energy capture, while smoothing the highly variable power from individual waves into a stable electrical output.

We are also developing a new concept in which geological CO₂ storage reservoirs are used for thermal energy storage.

CO₂ in the reservoir serves both as the working fluid and as the thermal storage medium in a heat-pump/heat-engine cycle that transfers thermal energy between the ocean and the reservoir during the charging and discharging of electricity.

2. Which markets or customers do you serve?

We are currently focusing on Norway, where we see a very attractive combination of wave-energy resources, offshore industry and large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) development.

The user case we are looking at is an offshore energy-hub concept combining wave power with long-duration energy storage to provide constant power for industrial applications such as offshore oil and gas production, AI data centers, and hydrogen and ammonia production.

Studies show that wave-energy arrays could achieve several times higher energy production per unit of ocean area than offshore wind in suitable locations. This suggests that the Norwegian offshore areas being considered for 30 GW of wind power could potentially also accommodate wave power in the order of 100 GW.

More than 2 billion tonnes of potential CO₂ storage capacity have already been awarded in Norwegian storage licenses.

Our own preliminary calculations indicate that 1 billion tonnes of CO₂ available for active circulation for thermal storage, could represent approximately 10 TWh of electrical energy-storage capacity, while the CO₂ remains in the reservoir and is circulated in a closed loop.

CO2 storage areas would therefore be suitable locations for energy hubs, and we are now reaching out to Norwegian offshore companies and research institutes for collaboration on this.

3. What is your key expertise or competitive advantage?

We have 18 years of experience in wave-energy technology development, focusing on advanced phase control technology, integrated energy storage and material efficiency.

We are innovation- and IP-driven, and experts in system integration, design and simulations. We are also experienced in developing technology together with specialized component suppliers, research institutions and industrial partners through international collaboration projects.

4. What are you working on right now?

InfinityWEC is currently being developed and validated through two ongoing EU-funded international collaboration projects.

The INFINITY project focuses on advanced control algorithms and the development and dry testing of the InfinityWEC power take-off, while WECHULL+ focuses on cost-efficient floating structures using high-performance concrete.

In parallel, we are working on the new offshore energy-hub concept, and to verify the feasibility of turning offshore CCS reservoirs into CO2 based energy storage in collaboration with offshore companies and research institutes

5. Your life motto / business motto

We don’t really have a formal business motto, but a phrase that captures how we work could be: Do whatever it takes to get it right – and never give up.

6. Which cluster member would you like to hear from next?

It would be nice to hear from one of the other new members in the cluster, like Hugg!

Thank you for the insight Mikael.