From ocean waves to electricity: clean power for our planet

Braverman thought of a less expensive, safer alternative: Installing “floaters” on existing manmade structures – piers, jetties and breakwaters – and putting the main energy-creating equipment with its sensitive computers and generators on land.

Gibraltar, Mexico, Portugal
In 2014, when she was just 24 years old, Braverman teamed up with serial entrepreneur David Leb, who had decamped from a high-tech career to Panama where he was running a surf camp.

The lure of creating a company in renewable energy brought Leb back. Braverman and Leb named their new company Eco Wave Power.

The company landed its first client in Gibraltar. “It’s the first wave power company to be connected to the electrical grid under a PPA [power purchase agreement],” Braverman says.

A second working installation, in Jaffa, is used by the company for R&D and to demonstrate the system to investors and potential partners.

Eco Wave Power is now negotiating deals for a 4.1-megawatt installation in Mexico and a four-location 20-megawatt mega-project in Portugal. The latter has already progressed towards a concession agreement with APDL, the company that manages the port in Leixos, northern Portugal.

Bobbing Floaters
How does Eco Wave Power convert the movement of waves into electricity? Unlike hydroelectric systems, the waves do not spin a turbine directly. Rather, as the floaters bob up and down according to the height of the waves, pressure is created in hydraulic pistons, which push a biodegradable liquid through a pipe to an “accumulator” located shoreside.

That, in turn, turns a hydro-motor coupled to a generator to produce electricity. The fluid is returned to the pipe where it can be re-used by the pistons, making it a closed and “green” system.

Eco Wave Power can work in any location with waves of at least a half meter in height.

Braverman says if Wave Power were implemented everywhere in the world meeting that requirement, it could generate twice the amount of electricity currently created by all sources.

To that end, Portugal ultimately hopes to supply 25% of its annual power consumption from wave power. “There is a potential to install three to four gigawatts of wave power capacity in Portugal alone,” Braverman points out.

Wave power also generates jobs: the Portugal project, if fully implemented, would result in the creation of 1,500 new positions.

Washing Away Red Tape
While Eco Wave Power’s technology is key, the biggest obstacles the company runs into are not mechanical but bureaucratic.

“In many countries, the only policies they have in place relate to solar or wind and are from 20 to 30 years ago,” Braverman says.

New regulations need to be drawn up – what licenses does a wave power company need? What fees must it pay? “Countries, ports and investors are very excited by these new types of projects, but it takes time to develop the first one.”

Eco Wave Power was recognized as a “pioneering technology” by the Chief Scientist of the Energy Ministry of Israel and received an “Efficient Solution” label from the Solar Impulse Foundation. The United Nations gave the company its Global Climate Action award.

Eco Wave Power has received grants from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 fund and the Israel Energy Ministry.

The 11-person company raised $13.6 million when it went public in 2019. Its IPO took place on the NASDAQ First North market in Stockholm. Why Scandinavia?

“First, Sweden is very supportive of renewable energy, with 54% of the country’s energy coming from renewable,” Braverman says.

There is also a poetic justice to the Swedish connection, dating back to Braverman’s childhood. Swedish scientists were the first to detect the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster and to alert the world, at a time when Soviet officials were still denying there was a problem.

How has the coronavirus connection affected what Braverman and Eco Wave Power are doing?

“In the short run, it has a negative influence,” Braverman admits. “During the crisis, governments are not pushing renewable energy projects as a priority, which causes delays in execution and licensing, since a lot of the organizations responsible are not working or are working part-time.”

But there’s an upside, too. “In the long run, corona has taught us something important,” Braverman says. “When we start to get images of clear skies in China and sparkling canals in Venice, we get a glimpse of how a cleaner world could look.”

Brian Blum writes about startups, pharmaceutical advances, and scientific discoveries for Israel21c. This article is published courtesy of Israel21c.