Waves4Power AB, a young company with a long history.
Few, if any, other wave power company has
accomplished what Waves4Power has done with the WaveEL-Buoy;
to go from an idea to a full scale ocean tested
prototype in less than two years without an external
large investor.
Even though the company started in August of 2008 the
experience among the founders of the company is some of
the longest within the wave power industry. Waves4Power
is built on a foundation laid by its sister company
InterProject Service AB (IPS) and the same group of
experts that now have formed Waves4Power. It all started
at the time of the first oil crisis in the mid-1970s.
IPS
tested a series of scaled OWECs (Offshore Wave Energy
Converters) in the 1970s which culminated in the full
scale IPS-Buoy – Elskling – tested off the
Swedish west coast in 1980 and 1981. The test results
were very good but the interest in alternative energy
dropped due to lower oil prices, and the development of
the IPS-Buoy stopped. However the IPS-principal for an
OWEC continued to be one of the most studied and tested
by individuals and universities during the following
decades.
In 2001 Hans and Göran Fredrikson – the sons of IPS’s
founder Gunnar Fredrikson – started AquaEnergy Group in
the US with the help of a couple of friends. AquaEnergy
developed the AquaBuOY – again with the help of the same
experts that are now involved with Waves4Power. The
AquaBuOY was built on the same IPS-principal as the
present WaveEL-Buoy utilizes, but had a different energy
conversion system. In 2006 AquaEnergy was sold to
Finavera Renewables Inc. – a Canadian company with an
interest in wind power in British Columbia. Finavera
built an AquaBuOY prototype and tested it off the Oregon
coast in 2007 but ceased to further develop the
device and turned their focus to wind power only.
Finavera’s retreat from the wave power arena opened the
possibility for Hans and Göran to once again bring the
team of experts together and in 2008 form Waves4Power
AB, a Swedish company with its seat in Göteborg with the
aim of developing a simple cost efficient wave power
system – the WaveEL-Buoy – based on the IPS-principle.
IPS
tested a series of scaled OWECs (Offshore Wave Energy
Converters) in the 1970s which culminated in the full
scale IPS-Buoy – Elskling – tested off the
Swedish west coast in 1980 and 1981. The test results
were very good but the interest in alternative energy
dropped due to lower oil prices, and the development of
the IPS-Buoy stopped. However the IPS-principal for an
OWEC continued to be one of the most studied and tested
by individuals and universities during the following
decades.
