CorPower plans 45-machine wave array as marine power remains untested at scale
CorPower is planning a 45-machine wave farm in Portugal by 2030 and a 15-buoy farm in Scotland, but wave power is still untested at scale.
How it was covered
- BBC News was the only channel found covering it.
- Channel 5, BBC One, Channel 4, GB News, ITV and Sky News: not found in tracked broadcasts.
The Full Story
A plain summary built from the channels that reported this story. Facts only one channel reported are attributed to it.
CorPower is planning larger wave energy arrays after testing its buoy-based machines in Portugal. The Swedish company has one converter operating there and says two more will be deployed later this year. It is planning a 45-machine array in Portugal and aims to have a 15 megawatt wave farm up and running by the end of 2029 or early 2030. It also intends to expand to Scotland, eventually installing a wave farm with 15 buoys.
The machine is a yellow buoy anchored to the sea floor. At full scale it is about 10 metres in diameter and 18 metres tall. Inside is a power take-off, an electromechanical system that moves up and down as waves lift the buoy and let it fall. The design was inspired by the heart: muscles pump blood out, while stored hydraulic energy refills it. CorPower uses pneumatic stored energy in a pretensioning system for the return motion, so it can extract power on both the up and down stroke. A quarter-size scale model was shown to explain the system.
A control room in Stockholm carries out round-the-clock monitoring of the Portuguese site. Operators use weather forecasts, power output, wave heights and wave lengths to track performance. The company says the most promising locations have strong, consistent swells throughout the year. In Europe, that means the Atlantic coast, including Portugal, Spain, France, the UK, Ireland and Norway.
CorPower first put electricity on the Portuguese grid in 2023. Climate experts estimate that almost 30,000 terawatt hours of wave energy could be generated globally each year, around 10 times the EU's current electricity supply. But wave power remains a tiny drop in the ocean. Unlike wind and solar, the technology is yet to be tested at scale. Past devices have either broken in storms or become too big and costly compared with the electricity they produced.
CorPower believes its design can overcome those problems. Its C5 machines, now in manufacturing, have about half as many parts as the C4 installed in Portugal but are expected to produce 70 to 80 percent more energy in a year. The company says the focus is on simplification, fewer parts, less complexity and lower costs.
Key Claims
Claims reported during this story's coverage, grouped by how many channels reported each one. Select a dot to see the source excerpt.
| Claim |  |
|---|---|
| Only on one channel | |
| CorPower aims to have a 15 megawatt wave farm operational by the end of 2029 or early 2030. | |
| CorPower plans a 45-machine wave array in Portugal and expects to deploy two more machines there later this year. | |
| Wave power has not yet been tested at scale, unlike wind and solar. | |
Channel Perspectives
What each channel focused on, with key quotes.
The BBC Newscast segment was explanatory and company-led. It spent most of its time on how CorPower's buoy works, including the heart-inspired power take-off, and then set out its plans for Portugal and Scotland. It balanced the optimism with clear caveats that wave power is still tiny and untested at scale, and noted past failures in storms and costs.
- “Together with wind and solar, we can unlock 24-7 clean energy or firm clean power.”
- “But today, wave power remains only a tiny drop in the ocean.”
- “And unlike wind and solar, this technology is yet to be tested at scale.”
Broadcast Timeline
News broadcasts tracked for this story, in time order.