Wavebob Ltd., Ireland's leading ocean energy technology company has been awarded the prestigious Energy Ocean Technology Pioneer Award at a ceremony in Fort Lauderdale, USA. 

The Energy Ocean International Conference is the world’s leading event focusing on renewable and sustainable energy from the ocean and is the primary education platform and networking event for key players in the industry.  The conference highlights the latest technological advances, investment opportunities, regulatory issues, and planned and implemented projects around the world.  It is a key annual event for regulators, international utilities, banking institutions, engineering firms, manufacturers, academic institutions etc.

Irish wave energy technology company Wavebob Ltd. announced today that the EU FP7 R&D programme is to provide grant aid of €5.1 million to a consortium led by Wavebob Ltd, in order to deploy a full-scale pre-commercial, grid-connected wave energy converter (WEC) off the coast of Portugal. The 6-company consortium will invest a further €3.4 million, bringing total funding for the project to over €8.5 million.

The 6-company consortium will invest a further €3.4 million, bringing total funding for the project to over €8.5 million. Working under the project name STANDPOINT, the 6-company consortium aims to demonstrate that the Wavebob device is the most suitable technology to be adopted as the internationally standardized method of harvesting energy from the ocean waves.

One of the top 100 Irish American business executives in the U.S., Mr. John Hartnett, has joined the board of Wavebob Ltd. as a non-executive director.

A native of Limerick, Mr. Hartnett is based in Silicon Valley, California. He is CEO of G24 Innovations (www.g24i.com) and Chairman of the Irish Technology Leaders Group (www.itlg.org). His appointment brings a wealth of high-tech experience and considerable international profile to Maynooth-based company Wavebob Ltd. His career in high-tech to date boasts some of the industry’s leading companies such as Palm Inc, Handspring, Metacreations, Claris, AT&T, Digital Equipment and Wang. He has over 20 years of senior management experience across sales, marketing and operations in the U.S. and Ireland.

ESB International (ESBI) is to provide the Irish owned wave energy company, Wavebob, with specialist engineering expertise for the development of its wave energy converter over the next two years.

 As part of the contract, ESBI will work with Wavebob on the design of its first grid- connected device which is due to be installed in Portugal in 2011.
ESBI will also provide electrical engineering services to Wavebob in the design, manufacture, testing and commissioning of medium and low voltage equipment on the Wavebob device.
Technical support in areas such as environmental assessment, grid connection and performance validation will also form part of the contract. The agreement will run initially over two years with an option to extend.