£8 million needed to take wave energy prototype to next stage

The idea behind the Anaconda, which is being developed by Checkmate Seaenergy Ltd, is disarmingly simple. Essentially, it is a length of rubber tubing filled with water, anchored to the seabed but floating just beneath the sea surface at right angles to the waves. Waves in the water create bulges along the tubing that travel along its length, creating energy. At the end of the tube, the surge of energy drives a turbine that generates electricity.

It’s designers are confident that the Anaconda will withstand anything the sea has to throw at it. Previous wave energy devices have tended to deteriorate in the harsh marine environment, but Checkmate Seaenergy says the simplicity of Anaconda is its strength: it is non-mechanical and is mainly made of rubber, which means it is naturally resilient with few moving parts to maintain.

Earlier this week, Checkmate Seaenergy invited potential investors and the media to see a nine metre long prototype which it has been testing at the UK’s largest wave testing facility at QinetiQ’s Haslar Marine Technology Park at Gosport.  

Paul Auston, chairman of the Checkmate Group, said: “We’ve seen excellent results in scale model testing, and we are now gearing up to attract the necessary investment to develop Anaconda and take this proven concept through to full commercialisation within the next five years.”

Auston told Greenwise that this week’s launch went “extremely well”, with the prototype receiving an enthusiastic welcome from potential investors “though we’re not asking anyone to invest at the moment,” he said.

The company will be putting together a “memorandum” with which to go to the City in June, supported with figures from the Carbon Trust on the cost of the energy generated. At that point it will be looking for investment of between £8 million and £10 million to test a quarter-sized Anaconda out at sea, while at the same time developing the full-size model.

“We’ll go back to the City once the quarter size [Anaconda] is up and running (and doing all that we said it would and hitting all our targets) for the rest of the money we need to start producing the full-size Anaconda commercially,” said Auston

Full-sized Anacondas will be 200 metres long and, according to Checkmate Seaenergy, will each produce enough electricity to power 1,000 homes. The idea is that ‘farms’ of 50 or more Anacondas will be tethered off the UK coast.

Checkmate Seaenergy says it aims to produce the most cost-effective wave energy available. It has been reported that research from the Carbon Trust shows that, whereas wave energy in general costs around 25p per KWh to make, the Anaconda has the potential to bring prices down to around 9p per KWh – compared with mains electricity form fossil fuels which currently costs around 6p per KWh.

Wave energy is free and widely available to the UK and Eire. Government studies estimate that it has the potential to provide three to five per cent of our electricity generation in the next few years and as much as 20 per cent in the long term. Checkmate Seaenergy says it is confident that Anaconda could make a significant contribution to meeting the Government’s target of having 20 per cent of the UK’s electricity supply generated from renewable sources by 2020.

The company is keen to take its design beyond UK shores, however. It says other potentially wave-rich coasts include the US and South American western seaboards, South Africa, Australia, parts of Malaysia, Japan, New Zealand and the western facing coasts of Europe. It says that any coast where the wave strength is over 25KW per metre has the potential for an Anaconda installation.