Company Background

Green Ocean Energy Ltd was formed in 2005 to develop and commercialise
Ocean Treader a wave energy device for offshore ocean deployment.

The company is a spin off from Nordeng (Scot) Ltd which is an engineering design consultancy firm with 20 years experience in structural and mechanical design for the offshore oil and gas industry. Nordeng built up extensive experience of the design of large moving structures working in the marine environment such as Riser Elevators for use on the pipe deck of offshore oil rigs. This work was certified by DNV or ABS. Another line of work was the development of Motion Simulators for training of personnel. This built on the experience of large moving structures to now also contain personnel, and the utilization of complex control systems.

Ocean Treader is highly efficient, and will fulfil the demand for commercially viable, energy production from offshore ocean wave systems. Ocean Treader is now beyond proof of concept and is rated at 500KW.

From this work a derivative machine of simplified design, Wave Treader, has been developed using aspects of Ocean Treader and mounting them on the foundation of an Offshore Wind Turbine. This is commercially attractive because of the relatively low technical risk, and being quicker to market.

Npower has supported a Feasibility Study into the commercial application of Wave Treader via their Juice Fund and we expect to build a full size prototype of Wave Treader in 2009 with commercialisation in 2010.

We now have two related product streams, each of which have great technical and commercial potential and there is good commercial sense in exploiting both, using the faster route to market of Wave Treader to support the more complex development of Ocean Treader.

This work has received a SMART award as well as other grant support from Scottish Enterprise, and we anticipate continuing support and encouragement from the public sector.