Finland: Wello Commences Series B Wave Energy Funding

Finnish renewable technology developer, Wello Ltd, recently announced that it has started Series B funding.

Power Fund II and Finnvera Venture Capital have agreed on 3 Million euros funding package as part of the Series B funding. Discussions with additional investors to close further funding have also been initiated.

Wello is planning to use this funding to commercialize direct conversion wave energy converter currently tested in Orkney as well as to prepare for pilot wave energy park installation in close co-operation with utility companies.

Aki Luukkainen, CEO of Wello Ltd, says: “We have been able to develop a full size wave energy converter with exceptionally low resources by re-purposing the technology from wind power plants coupled with traditional ship building process. Further funding will allow us to commercialize this technology to main markets.”

Wello is a developer of wave energy converters. Founders of Wello have been responsible for dozens of wave energy concepts with thousands of hours spent at sea. The Penguin model was selected for further development in 2008 when Wello Ltd. was founded. Since then a number of scale models have been built and tested successfully in laboratory and at sea, most recently a full size device now under tests. The Wello Penguin has a power generation capacity of 0.5-1MW, with an upgrade path towards 10MW. A fully sealed floating generator platform, with all moving parts inside the platform, Penguin delivers harvested energy as electricity to the national grid.

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Subsea World News Staff, May 21, 2012; Image: Wello