New Innovators: The energy wave of the future, and how to get its measure

Harnessing the power of the sea to create a sustainable power source might seem a great idea, particularly for an island nation. But it’s not that simple, and engineers around the world have long grappled with how best to do it.

"In the context of wave energy, there is not as yet a truly successful technology anywhere in the world, and by 'successful', we mean the reliable production of electricity at reasonable capital and current costs," says Joss Fitzsimons, chief technical officer and co-founder of wave energy technology company Jospa.

Jospa’s main focus is the development of wave energy convertors (WECs) that turn wave energy into electricity. The company is about to patent its novel WEC technology, in gestation for seven years, and to launch Veppi, a velocity-proportional power instrument that was developed as part of the company’s research but is a saleable product in its own right.

“To be affordable, the development of WECs must be optimised at small scale, using small models,” Fitzsimons says. “This is typically carried out in special wave tanks and requires a sophisticated power measurement system. However, there is currently no instrument on the market that can measure power from complex waves at small model scale. There have been a number of attempts to develop one that can, but so far all have failed.

"Necessity being the mother of invention, we decided to develop the instrument we needed ourselves, as it was crucial to our WEC progress and to containing development costs. The result is Veppi, which we were able to test and prove at the excellent facilities in the Beaufort Laboratory in University College Cork. It quickly proved its worth, and with its success we suddenly realised we had a viable standalone product on our hands."

Jospa has developed an accurate, easy-to-use measurement system for dynamic wave conditions, which Fitzsimons says will save those developing WECs around the world a lot of time and money in development costs.

“Physically, Veppi is a combination of mechanical, electrical and electronic hardware – including gyroscopes, load cells, gears, magnetic particle brake – with proprietary software,” he says.

Backing and support

Jospa has received backing from

Enterprise Ireland

and strong ongoing support from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland during its research. The company is now hoping to attract an angel investor to help fund its further development. Ultimately, Jospa’s aim is to develop its own successful WEC (for which the potential international market is significant), with sales of Veppi, which will be launched at the end of 2015, bringing in the cash to support the business as it pursues this goal.

Fitzsimons's co-founder in the business is Patrick Duffy, a former Fulbright scholar and electrical engineer by profession. Fitzsimons comes from a mechanical engineering background and already has a number of patents to his credit.

“The market for Veppi is niche, and our potential customers are universities, test and research facilities and WEC developers worldwide,” he says. “Potential users are clearly identifiable and their interest in an instrument that can overcome the current hurdles will be high. Basically, there is a need for such a measuring system, and no one supplying it, and we expect to have the market to ourselves. The next step is to add to its functionality and flexibility.”

Sales of Veppi will be modest, but Fitzsimons says the margin on the product will be healthy. It has only cost a few thousand euro to develop, but Fitzsimons says it would be impossible to put a value on the man hours devoted to the project over the past seven years. Jospa is also developing several other patented technologies that will interest the wider marine market.