CorPower Ocean: Making Waves In Renewable Energy

CorPower Ocean is a company focused on developing innovative and advanced wave energy converters in order to tackle the climate crisis. Antoine Bonnel, an engineer at CorPower, explains that “we are a company creating machines to make low carbon electricity. Fighting climate change is the core of our DNA. We have some people coming from other industries that wanted to do something that has a mission to create this low carbon electricity. 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.

Senior Mechanical Design Engineer Jacob Ljungbäck talks more about the CorPower Ocean solution; “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. It's anchored to the bottom…it follows the wave motion. And this up and down motion, we transfer to rotational movement, which we then extract energy from through a gearbox which we developed ourselves. This generates electricity that we transport to the grid through a subsea cable. One full scale wave energy converter (can generate) 300 kilowatts, so that's approximately enough for a hundred homes. What we’re doing is trying to do is build a scalable network of these wave energy converters. And you can also combine it with offshore wind, for instance.”

CorPower’s wave energy convertors are tested at the center in Stockholm. “…with this test rig, we are able to simulate sea conditions of virtually any wave. What we currently have built is a full scale prototype, which we have deployed outside the coast i in Portugal, outside Vienna De Costello, in Adora.” Antoine Bonnel, an engineer at CorPower, takes us through the control panel for the test rig; “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.”

Climate change is a critical issue, but CorPower and it’s employees are passionate about the role they can play towards developing a greener future. “We are very aware and concerned 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. 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 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.”

With easy, secure data access for multi-disciplinary and geographically distributed teams, quality-focused processes, and a data driven approach to manufacturing, Windchill is elevating how product development gets done. Mark Lobo from PTC explains how CorPower is benefiting from using Windchill. “When you think about the complexity involved from an engineering perspective, this is where Windchill really shows its strength. CorPower (can) securely manage documents, presentations, and calculations, and securely and traceably connect that through the Microsoft Office integration. The idea generation, development process, simulation, and even creation of prototypes is really important. 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.

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 Derrier for guiding us around the company’s workshop.

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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.