The UK company founded in 2007 is a multi-disciplinary technology business that brings research knowledge and expertise together to design and develop products which harvest energy from the naturally occurring motional energy in the environment.
Providing power in remote locations has been the company's focus for several years with huge interest for power in subsea and remote locations. Their technology has multiple uses in sea and also on land in harvesting human and animal motion.
At present the company is working to harvest power from Vortex Induced Vibration (VIV) from underwater flow to power sensors, data gathering equipment and many other uses where power is needed.
The subsea device is able to turn energy from the waves and currents into useable power by harnessing the energy from all 6 degrees of motion and converting this into usable electrical power.
Contained within a sealed unit, the device uses two pendulums connected to a flywheel to generate electricity. Movement causes the pendulums to swing; they are attached to a shaft that then turns a flywheel in one direction. The flywheel is connected to a generator, which produces electricity.
The water motion is harvested, taking the Vortex Induces Vibration (VIV) motion from 1 metre per second and upwards, through a unit that is contained within a sealed High Density Poly Ethylene (HDPE) flexible pipe.
The VIV motion is then turned into electrical power which can be stored and used as and when required.
The subsea application is focused on small-scale power generation for subsea electronics, particularly where the replacement of battery packs is an expensive offshore activity requiring remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and their supporting ships and crew, or autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) charging stations. It can also be used wherever a remote subsea power requirement exists, such as remote sensing in aquaculture and scientific data for environmental monitoring, as well as in defence and security applications.
The technology can also be used for wind power: an easy-to-assemble wind motion unit which will work well in remote and coastal locations providing electrical power. The units can be set up quickly and easily, and would work well in developing countries (e.g. townships in South Africa)
It can also harvest human motion to be used for IoT (Internet of Things): a small unit can be fitted in a backpack and all motion, walking, running, jogging can be turned into useable power, and can be used in both the leisure market and defence operations.
Units can range from very small (80mm) to large (2 metres) and can produce between 5W and 500W of power, subject to environment conditions.
The subsea units have been tested in a flow tank environment in order to prove the feasibility of the technology
To pair with this technology, the UK company has designed and developed an environmental energy monitoring device to gather and interpret the potential energy available in a given environment. The collected data can be used to program a robot, select, configure and optimise the system to maximise energy harvesting.
To date the company has won global awards confirming that their technology can harvest the maximum amount of power in various environments.
The company is now looking for partners to adapt and commercialise the technology in their respective markets. A commercial agreement with technical assistance is sought.
