Mocean Energy Aims to Create an Offshore Renewable Microgrid

To start us off, can you give us a by the numbers look at Mocean Energy today?

Mocean Energy has been operating since 2016, and today we have 23 people. We have built a 10 kW prototype that's been tested at sea for more than 14 months. Our first product, Blue Star, will be 20 kW of wave energy and 5 kW of solar and that will be about saving money and CO2 in offshore operations.

What attracted you to this business and when did you know that yours would be a career in ocean technology?

Like most careers, it's a bit of a winding journey. I grew up in Maryland going out on the water and sailing. My first job was with a company that developed software for naval architecture applications, and I ran with that and earned a Master's in Ocean Engineering at Oregon State University, which is where I first started working on wave energy. Next, I went to the University of Edinburgh to do my PhD in Hydrodynamics and Wave Energy. And then the funding opportunity came up and my co-founder Chris Retzler and I started Mocean.

We're here primarily to discuss BlueStar and its application in helping to electrify the sea floor. But before we dig into that, can you give us the overview of the Mocean wave energy converter technology?

Conceptually, our wave energy device is very simple mechanically: we have a big hinge and waves cause a flexing about that hinge that drives a generator. But what we've brought to the table is innovations around the shape of the machine. Our prototype has these big scoops on the front and the back that we call wave channels. They do a number of somewhat nuanced and complex hydrodynamic things, but basically, they cause the machine to move a lot more in waves. And if you move more in waves, you generate more power. (To develop the machine) we developed a software optimization program that created tens of thousands of different shape concepts, so we ran them through a simulation and competed them against one another to find the best.

What are the biggest maintenance considerations of the unit?

Mechanically it's very simple. It's a hinge that moves back and forth and drives a generator. I think some of the more challenging aspects of that are converting that low speed, high torque mechanical power into electrical power. Generators typically want to run fast, whereas what we have is a very slow speed power and we're using a gearbox to convert that into electricity. So, it’s something that needs special consideration, but we are generating more and more data around that.

Is there a ‘fail safe’ mode for when the waves get too big?

We designed the system to be fail safe; it doesn't need to enter any survival mode. That's intentional because if something breaks and you can't enter (or exit) that survival mode of operation, you're in trouble. We've seen some big storms this past year, and we have some great videos on YouTube from cameras on the machine. The front of the machine has this big slope plate that ensures that the bow always stays submerged. Waves are overtopping (the unit) and that's a natural load shedding mechanism. On the hinge side, what would be a concern is what's called an end stop.

If you have the hinge rotate so far around that you get a metal-on-metal impact, which is a bad thing. But we've designed the hinge to be able to accommodate greater than plus or minus 90 degrees of rotation. In all of the testing we've done offshore and in wave tanks, we've never seen that happen.

What do you see as the primary challenges or hurdles to bring WEC technology from the fringe to the mainstream?

We found an interesting market and application where we're deploying the technology: decarbonizing oil and gas. I’m talking about powering subsea equipment in the oil and gas sector where the traditional way that the equipment gets power is by running a cable along the seabed, either from a platform or from shore, and installing that cable is expensive. So, I liken it to a traditional electrical grid model. You have a central power station, you distribute that power by cables, and what we're proposing is the distributed renewable model. So instead of running a cable, we provide renewable energy where it's needed. We're trying to change the narrative and say, yes, we use wave energy, but our product is also going to have solar panels and battery storage is a really important part of it.

We're providing an offshore renewable microgrid solution, power and communication. So, we can link up to various wireless communications including the growing low orbit satellite network, Starlink and others. Within that we can offer a cost savings CO2 savings and it's really low hanging fruit in this decarbonization challenge. It's much faster and less expensive to install these kinds of systems than, say, powering an entire offshore platform with a wind farm. And there is a substantial CO2 savings. With one of our small machines, we estimate that we can save as much CO2 as a machine that generates 10 times as much power in a traditional renewables market.

You talked about decarbonizing oil and gas, but where else do you see potential for this Blue Star technology?

Besides pulling hydrocarbons out of the ground, the industry is very keen to sequester CO2 into the ground. There are projects that are being developed where you're going to put very similar technology offshore to put CO2 into the ground. You have [the push for residency for] autonomous subsea vehicles, [a subsea docking station that needs power]. There's emerging things like subsea data centers, and direct water CO2 capture from the oceans. Rather than pulling CO2 out of the air, people are talking about pulling it out of the ocean, and that kind of technology needs power.

Let’s look at the Blue Star technology today. Can you discuss where it's at in its development cycle and what's your timeline for its commercialization?

2024 is all about commercializing Blue Star. We have had our prototype out at sea for 14 months, and cumulatively it'll be tested through next spring. We feel that that gives us enough confidence in the performance of the technology that we can roll it out as a product. Certainly, things have not gone perfectly, but if they went perfectly, we wouldn't learn anything. We’re taking all of those learnings and we're applying them along with the kind of commercial design into the product. So, the product is being designed and we're doing studies for customers right now, front-end engineering, design studies, feasibility studies, and things like that, aimed towards getting the first Blue Star orders in 2024 and 2025.

When you look at 2024, what are the key milestones you hope to achieve?

It’s completing that trial next spring and demonstrating this as success of the technology. It's getting that substantial commercial traction from a customer, really towards getting a system offshore. And then we're also working on scaling up, so we're working on the larger scale technology, the Blue Horizon, as we have a project to get it in the water in a couple of years.