RW Power installs wave-powered desalination pump off Canary Islands

Norwegian company RW Power has installed its wave energy-powered seawater pumping device for a new set of trials at the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (PLOCAN).

The testing campaign has been financed by the €2.5 million Blue-GIFT project, within the Interreg Atlantic Area program, which helps bring marine renewable energy technologies to market by offering free access to a world-leading network of test centers.

RWPower is a company founded in 2011 whose objective is to develop and market renewable energy generation devices, install and operate desalination plants and carry out research and development of new technologies based on renewable energy.

One of the potential applications of the recently deployed device is the pumping of seawater into desalination plants located near the coast without the need of electric power.

A first stage of the project was carried out in 2016 and 2017 on the Atlantic coast of Norway, where an initial version of the device survived several endurance tests, according to PLOCAN.

Subsequently, a few different preliminary tests were carried out at the PLOCAN test site in 2018 and 2019, leading to the trials which took place in 2020.