CorPower Ocean: Making Waves In Renewable Energy

“We’re trying to be the most environmentally friendly option for power production.”

In this episode we're catching the wave - literally - with CorPower Ocean, the trailblazers of wave power technology. Join us as we explore how this pioneering company is leading the way with a carbon-free solution that balances supply and demand more efficiently, requiring less generation capacity, storage, and grid infrastructure. 

Engineers, Jacob Ljungbäck and Antoine Bonel take us into their world of wave energy and tell us all about this forward thinking company’s mission.Their innovative approach not only reduces the overall cost of zero-carbon electricity but also supports a more stable mix of renewable energy sources, enhancing the business case for green hydrogen.

Find out more about CorPower Ocean here.

Find out more about Windchill here.

Your host is Paul Haimes from industrial software company PTC. 

Episodes are released bi-weekly. Follow us on LinkedIn and X for updates.

This is an 18Sixty production for PTC. Executive producer is Jacqui Cook. Sound design and editing by Rema Mukena. Location recording by Benoît Derrier. And music by Rowan Bishop.

Transcript

Welcome to Third Angle, where today we're diving into wave power technology.

I'm your host, Paul Hames from industrial software company, PTC. In this podcast, we share the moments where digital transforms physical and meet the brilliant minds behind some of the most innovative products around the world, each powered by PTC technology.

To hit net zero targets around the world, we need to harness the power of nature and smart technology. In this episode, we learn all about CorPower Ocean, supported by PTC's largest partner, PDS Vision, who are leading the way with a wave energy system that balances supply and demand without needing as much generation capacity, storage, or grid infrastructure.

Our producer, Benoît Derrier, visited the company's testing center in Stockholm to see their latest prototype in action. He also spoke with Jacob Ljungbäck and Antoine Bonel, two of CorPower Ocean's talented engineers, who shared some amazing insights into their groundbreaking tech and its potential impact on renewable energy.

My name is Jacob Ljungbäck. I'm a Senior Mechanical Design Engineer here at CorPower Ocean. I've been here for nine and a half years. So my role is, I do the, the mechanical design of The power take off unit, all things ranging from, , steel parts to,  moving things and just getting the machine to work.

Our device works best in the world oceans, so we need the long waves that constantly come in and build up over miles and miles at sea. So we're talking like the Pacific, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean. Those are the markets where we really are competitive. The entire European coast, the western coast, has a very good grey climate.

And Portugal is one of the best. Through funding from the Portuguese government, we were able to use an existing test site there with an existing hub. Or,  grid connection, which we upgraded. And then we built in a local port in Vienna to Cosello. We built up our mobile,  hull, , manufacturing unit, which we also developed in house so that we can build this on every site we go to instead of transporting the hulls all around the world.

We can build it in a filament winding process.

So now we're going into the machine hall, where we do our testing of the power takeoff unit before we send it out for, , sea deployment.

So now we're walking down the stairs here in the machine hall and we have a big, , hold here with the machines and test rigs. Let's, let's go to the test rig over here.

So here we are at the test rig. It stands on a big, very large, , concrete. Fundamentals. Then we have the main frame where the, the gearbox are attached to. It uses the same type of gearbox as we have in the wave energy converter, very big motor, , a flywheel and a big, , pneumatic or, , air pressure cylinder to, to act as the sea.

So with this test, we are able to, , simulate sea conditions, , of virtually any wave. In the areas where we, we were able to deploy the, the wave energy converter, this is a full scale one. So we, what we have, what we currently have built is a full scale prototype, which we have deployed outside the coast in, in Portugal, outside Vienna De Costello, in Adora.

, so we tested that during the fall and , so that's why we don't have an actual machine here in the, in the machine hall. So it's not an actual machine, it's the internal components, so to speak. Yes. The power take off unit is the only thing that we are able to fit inside our machine hall. The hall itself, it's 9 meters in diameter and 18 meters long or high, which makes it impossible for us to fit it inside here.

We have here maybe, up to the roof, , five meters or something. That's what it looks like. It's anchored to the bottom. And what it does, it, it, it follows the waves, the wave motion. And this up and down motion, we transfer to rotational movement, which we then, , extract energy from. Through a,  a gearbox, which we developed ourselves.

This generates electricity. And which we, which we then transport to the grid through a subsea cable. So that, that's very, it's advanced algorithms that, that looks at the, the past wave. And then current speed. And then predicts what the next wave should look like. It uses machine, some, , a type of machine learning.

And then,  constantly updates, , the forecast to fit as well as possible. , wave energy, , is when we're trying to go to 100 percent renewable energy, wave energy could be a complementary part of it. So we already have solar, we have wind. Which, as we noticed the last years are a bit intermittent, so adding wave energy to this could smoothen out the production profile and then the overall electricity grid could, like, work better, basically.

One device of our full scale, , wave energy converter is 300 kilowatts, so that's approximately enough for a hundred homes.  then what we're doing is Trying to do is build a scalable network of these wave energy converters. So it's relatively small, even though it sounds very large. , what we do is we spread out a hundreds or maybe even thousands in a grid.

And that could then become a large, , power supplier. And you can also combine it with, , offshore wind, for instance. You could place, , the wave energy converters in between them because you have a much smaller distance in between them than the, the wind energy, , towers.

I'm Antoine Bonnel, an engineer here at CorPower. I've been here for, for seven years now, actually. I've been part of the mechanical design team doing material research and expanded in different fields, different directions in the, in the company, especially I have, , spent a lot of time testing some critical subsystems.

So doing some, , component tests on especially, , moving parts. So the ceiling and gating systems that has been something that I did for several years now. We have here a dedicated equipment that, , that we designed and built and operate. To test and validate the components that we use for these new devices.

So our device is a, is a floating structure that is anchored to the seabed. And the floater is a, is quite a big sphere. It's 10 meter diameter.  so it, it almost looks like a small house.  and we build that, , on site. But then inside that, , sphere, we have what we call the power takeoff. So that's the main machinery that converts.

It's the wave movement into electricity. It's a big round sphere, , that floats in the ocean, , and goes up and down with the waves, and it's attached to the seabed. And inside the device we have a big machine that converts the linear motion then into rotating motion, and the rotating motion then into electricity.

I am sitting here at the computer, the control center, for the test machine that we have here. And I see the curves in Live data of the frictions and movement of the machine. We also see all the sensors that we have in the machine with pressure and temperature. So I can really know how those components are doing when we are testing them.

And here on my left there is the machine and there's an enclosure, a safety cage. And inside we have this machine that is about four meters long with a crank and wheel mechanism of one meter stroke which we can test the different subsystems. This machine was designed for testing linear components. This is the first energy conversion of our machine.

We go from the elliptical chaotic movement of the waves into one linear motion, linear back and forth that goes up and down. And for that we have to guide and seal different, , fluids. For example, we have the sea water, we have some high pressure gases, some lubricants that we need to,  So here we have a machine that does just that, and we can, we can test different subsystems.

It's a crank mechanism. It's as old as the, as the world almost. It's the,  the first, , coal, , machines, , were using that. And, , many, many systems from centuries ago using a crank and wheel. , that is, , just, , doing, , back and forth movement and then, , that can push and pull on, on all the components that we want to test.

Let's make it move.

So now in this machine that,  has this crank wheel mechanism, , we have installed,  a test rod. So it's a tube that is then,  and, and a test chamber. The test chamber is gated and on, on this, , tube and going back and forth. In this test chamber, we have mounted some seals and guiding elements that are the same as what we use in our machine.

They are used to,  create this linear movement. They are used to also separate the seawater, not let the seawater inside the device. And we want to ensure that we have as low friction as possible, as low wear as possible, so that we can produce a lot of energy for a long time. And, , here we are operating on a, a shorter stroke.

It's only one meter compared to seven meters in the real device. So it's a scaled down system,  so that we can test at lab scale. And, , it still looks exactly the same, just smaller.  and this is how we test the new systems that we want to have. We are a company creating machines to make low carbon electricity.

So fighting climate change is the core of our DNA because obviously people joined the company for that reason. We have some people coming from other industries that wanted to do something that has a mission to create this low carbon electricity. So I believe that everybody is already quite engaged in the core business model, I would say.

And then we have, we wanted to go beyond because of course we are all employees. We are very aware and concerned for some of us about sustainability topics. So we created then an employee group to discuss what we think, what we feel personally, but also and mostly at work. And we quickly went in very interesting topics.

For example, the Who do we want to work with? , who do we want to sell our technology to? We had already external partners that were doing carbon calculations to see, are we actually low carbon?  how much emissions do we need to, to have to produce this electricity? Very quickly we have proven with the data that we are actually very low carbon already at the prototype stage.

But of course there is always more that can be done. My hope is that in a few decades we see those devices operating. And they contribute to some resilience of the energy sector. They contribute to having new ways of creating this electricity and especially that we can then decide what to lower the use of fossil fuels.

We don't want to just add to the system. We want to replace. And I hope that we will create enough electricity that then we will, it will become a logical choice. to combine all renewables together. 

We are tracking the environmental impact of all the materials that we use inside the wave energy converter and trying to minimize it, so we're looking into green steel and we're asking any supplier what they do to minimize their impact.

, like in the stage before us.  so that we're trying to be the most environmentally friendly or sustainable option for power production.

That was Jacob Ljungbäck and Antoine Bonel telling us about CorPower Ocean's fascinating solution to lower the total cost of zero carbon electricity. Now it's time to meet our expert, Mark Lobo, from PTC. Mark, CorPower are a startup company who are very near to producing a commercial product in a regulated business.

They've transitioned to PTC's robust PLM solution, Windchill. Can you give your insights to how they're going to benefit from using windchill in their business? 

Let's talk about CorPower Ocean. They are on a mission to make the world's first commercially successful wave energy converter. So despite being a young scale up, They felt that they needed to adopt PLM technology early to minimize some of the inefficiencies they saw.

When you think about the complexity involved from an engineering perspective, this is where Windchill really shows its strength. So why don't I highlight a few areas where CorPower really benefited from and will continue to benefit. So the first one is around document and CAD data management. So if you think back, geometric models of the mechanical and hydrodynamic components form the basis of the digital models of the wave power plants.

Now the CAD designers at CorPower use a seamless integration to Windchill to save and manage their CAD models from different CAD providers. In fact, a huge benefit for CorPower with the use of Windchill was that they were able to manage these CAD designs on their own. from various CAD vendors. In the future, CorPower will be able to securely manage documents, presentations they got to put together, and calculations, and securely and traceably connect that through the Microsoft Office integration.

So that's the first thing. Now, once you start creating all of this documentation, you need to be able to collaborate. Then Winchell offers great project management and project planning activities where you can think of activities, milestones, and deliverables, and ensuring that That the project progresses in the right steps.

The idea generation, development process, simulation, and even creation of prototypes really important for Scala. Windchill ensures that there's an easy capture and detailing of these new ideas with industry proven project management methods that allow these cross functional teams, both internal and external, to work with their collaboration partners.

So that's number two. The third one is change management. As you're starting to create all of this data and starting to collaborate, you really need Windchill that has a best practice change process solution that allows all of these different product development parties to instantly access all the necessary data in order to improve product quality, reduce their cost, minimize product inventory for the future, and improve time to market by minimizing manufacturing downtime when they get to that scale up.

While it was great to have all of this awesome technology at their disposal, it was really very important. For core power to also have the right implementation partner working lockstep with them on this journey. To this end, core power has been supported by PTC's largest partner, PDS vision. So PDS vision help core power to realize the need of the digital thread, and they were a fundamental partner in the adoption of PTC solutions.

Having worked closely with them throughout the entire process from realization to implementation, training and support. Just to round this out, CorPower's vision is a sustainable future powered by the ocean for generations to come. And Paul here at PTC, we're proud to be part of that journey.

Thanks to Mark Lobo for teaching us about PTC's robust PLM solution. And our guests, Jacob and Antoine for sharing CorPower Ocean's vision. And our producer, Benoît Derriere, for guiding us around the company's workshop. Please rate, review, and subscribe to our bi weekly, third angle episodes wherever you listen to your podcasts, and follow PTC on LinkedIn and X.

This is an 18Sixty production for PTC. Executive producer is Jacqui Cook. Sound design and editing by Rema Mukenna. Location recording by Benoît Derrier. And music by Rowan Bishop.