“Here I am, tearing my hair out daily, because I don’t have the resources to do the job effectively,” says an exasperated Michael Burrett. The managing director of Embley Energy Ltd, in Bristol, he is typical of the multitude of innovators out there who face the huge struggle of getting a great idea off the paper and into action.

In this case, the device is the Sperboy – a concrete, vertical pipe that bobs on the water and catches wave energy. It’s a simple-enough concept: waves move and are therefore loaded with kinetic energy, the energy of motion. That can be converted into electrical energy. As the wave bobs the pipe up and down, the air in the pipe goes up and down. The air drives a turbine and that, in turn, drives a close-coupled generator to create electricity. There are few moving parts so maintenance costs are low and the proof of concept has been in existence since the early 1990s. So why is the bobbing pipe still a pipe dream?

“Extracting energy is no problem – we could start tomorrow,” says Burrett. “The challenge is to deploy it at a cost that will compete with oil and nuclear. We have to compete with nuclear power stations where the decommissioning costs are not included, so we have to get down to a few pence per kilowatt.” Which means that the device has to be ultra-efficient in its energy generation, to turn a handsome profit above and beyond the costs of manufacture, installation and maintenance.

That takes funding. The proof of concept has been established and further advanced computer modelling and tank trials are underway to streamline the unit and maximise its ‘bob’. A £150,000 applied research grant from the Carbon Trust and funding from nPower is helping the company’s development, but Burrett says that £1 million is needed to give the company the profile and basic resources required to take it to the next level. That’s not a lot for a future source of energy for an island nation, but Burrett says that even buying a computer cartridge is difficult because cash is in such short supply.

“Why do I do it? A very serious sightline is the capital gain,” says Burrett. “It certainly isn’t for salary, that’s for sure. We have 23 investors and they are basically friends and family.”

At the other end of the country, the picture is very different for Pelamis Wave Power in Edinburgh. Business development director, Max Carcas, says: “The thing that got us going was the Scottish Renewables Order No3 which was a clear policy signal that there would be support for wave energy. Without that, we wouldn’t have progressed. There was funding for the technology push but what had been lacking, until recently, was the market pull in the form of a Government policy that supports wave power.”

Pelamis has been through the so-called Valley of Death – that gulf between the point where you can show that a product works and the point when you can actually start installing the product and, hopefully, begin to turn a profit. Each Pelamis generator is a series of bright red cylinders, linked by hinged joints. The wave-powered motion of these joints powers hydraulic generators to create electricity. At 140 metres long, each Pelamis is like a shiny string of sea sausages generating 25-40% of 750kw a year – enough to supply 500 homes. Developing them required venture capital and private equity to support the design, development, the team and the business infrastructure. The investors there were taking a high risk but looking at high returns in around ten years.

Installing the proven technology is down to the big utility companies. They are looking at low risk and consequently lower returns over 20-25 years. They are also vital in creating the infrastructure for the product. It can take up to three years to identify a site, arrange the national grid connection by buying or leasing the appropriate land, undertake the environmental surveys and secure the necessary permits.

With the investment of utilities including Babcock and Brown, Scottish Power Renewables and E.On, Pelamis generators are finally being installed off the coasts of Portugal – in the world’s first multi-unit wave farm – the Orkneys and Cornwall.

The utilities have been motivated in part by the Government’s Non-fossil Fuels Obligation, which compels them to generate some power from renewable energy sources. But this policy has favoured proven technology such as wind power, but not new concepts such as marine energy.

Now, the Government is finally moving from a one-size-fits-all obligation to bands that are intended to support marine and other technologies. But disappointingly, says Carcas, the level is not set at the level required “to stimulate a lot of activity”.

Wave power has great low carbon potential for an island nation but, as Sperboy and Pelamis reveal, it is far from easy to float these bright ideas successfully.

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