June 15, 2022 • 36 mins
Today we're discussing wave energy! Oceans cover 71% of the surface of the globe and guess what! Waves are everywhere! It's estimated that just the wave energy potential along the continental US could be 33-65% of the total electricity demand in the US.
You'll hear from Michael Henricksen the CEO of WavePiston. WavePiston is changing the game when it comes to capturing and converting wave energy into electrical potential or desalinated seawater. Based in Denmark, they are creating a non-intrusive, simple, robust and low-cost solution to capturing the energy potential of the ocean.
Interested in learning more about Wave Energy in Canada? Click here!
To learn more about the WavePiston system Click Here.
The ABP is establishing a conservation Aquarium in the Prairies to help tell the Story of Water.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
David Evans (00:06):
On today's deep dive episode, we're talking to
Michael Henrickson, the CEO ofwave piston. Wave piston is a
Danish company that's focusingon how we can turn wave energy
into electrical potential, andalso desalinated seawater. We
talk about the potential of waveenergy for the future of energy
production, we talk about theenvironmental impacts, we talk
(00:26):
about the difficulties of evenworking in the ocean, especially
in an area where you're tryingto target being in giant huge
waves. Now, one note before weget started, unfortunately, the
audio for this interview soundeddifferently when we were
recording it than when itactually came out in the
recording. So Michael might be abit hard to understand. But all
(00:47):
of the information he has issuper, super interesting. It's
well worth the lesson. Alright,that's enough for me. Let's get
this thing started. So sit backrelax and get ready to learn a
little bit more about creatingelectricity from waves that sir,
(01:09):
Barney, G. Nick nippy will meanto be low in zero to marry a
(01:30):
cheap, Chinese way. Why water wedoing? And how can we do better?
Your one stop shop foreverything water related from
discussing water, its use andthe organisms that depend on it
(01:52):
for all the global issues thatyou really never knew all had to
do with water. I'm your host,David Evans from the aquatic
biosphere project. And I justwant to ask you something. What
are we doing? And how can we dobetter?
(02:18):
I and welcome back to anotherdeep dive episode of the what
are we doing podcast where we'retalking to Michael Henrickson
from a wave piston. I'm soexcited to introduce Michael and
get started learning about waveenergy. So how about you
introduce yourself and let ourlisteners know a little bit
about yourself?
Michael Henricksen, WaveP (02:38):
Yeah, thanks, David. Yes, well, I'm
Michael Hendrickson. I'm the CEOof wave piston. Also one of the
founders of wave piston one ofthe only non technical non
engineers in the companyactually more Business
Commercial Background, I've beeninvolved in wave energy since
end of 2013 and CEO of wavepiston since 2014. And in Wave
(03:03):
piston, yeah, as you say, we areworking with the energy of the
waves to convert them tosomething usable, which is we
can convert it both via to mygenerator to electricity. And we
can also use the energy in thewave for desalination via
reverse osmosis plants. So thisis sort of our basics of our
system.
David Evans (03:23):
Very cool to marrying not only generating
electricity, but alsodesalination. That's such a such
a unique concept of having bothbe part of the design, rather
than one specifically fuelingthe other. Where did this idea
come from? Yes, it's
Michael Henricksen, Wa (03:39):
actually my clever colleagues that came
with the idea so two otherfounders were also the inventors
that's Martin and Christian,they are the engineers here what
are some of the engineers nowthe company they had a common
background working withdifferent types of projects,
development projects, etc. Andfacing has a background before
that he was in the offshoreindustry. And he was sort of
(04:01):
looking at this the waves and hesaid, Okay, it's quite strange,
why it hasn't been possible toharvest the energy from the
waves in an efficient way tomake something sort of actually
that's viable that could becompetitive. Yeah. And the
reason is of course, it is quitedifficult. So we have to be it
is difficult to work in the seain the offshore not in the
(04:21):
normal conditions, but when youknow, the storms come and the
very large ways that there is weneed to have some good storm
protection systems as well. Butall in all, it's a very hot
environment they were theystarted analyzing this, see,
okay, what type of concepts werethere in the market and what
were the positive things andnegative things about those? And
(04:43):
then so far out that many ofthese concepts have had evolved
started from someone having ideahow to convert the entity into
waves, which is actually not sohow to do like, you know,
sitting with a rubber dog inyour bathtub. This is not
actually the main issue aproblem is not how to do it. But
it's actually to understand thetotal cost structure of the
(05:06):
whole system. It's not only theones you know, the things that
move covered, but the wholesystem, all the forces and all
the things you have to handleboth in normal conditions, these
extreme conditions. So they werelooking at that, and they they
came up with this concept wehave right now, try to do it
briefly to explain how it lookslike. Because that's, that's
(05:27):
also the reason I came intothis, I think it's really very
interesting and innovative andthe genius concept, you could
say, because instead of sort offighting the forces, they have
the ocean, they're sort ofplaying with the forces. Yeah,
so what we have is our system islike, you have a plate like a
plate in the water standingvertically in the plate in the
(05:49):
water, when the wave pass by theplate goes back and forth, this
back and forth movement, thisbackpack, a portable, you can
use sort of you can convert tosomething interesting. But what
happens and others have donethat that's nothing either
flipping up or down, whatever.
But what happens if you havemany of these plates, we call
them energy collectors. So maybethese plates besides each other,
and the wave pass by them witheach work, you know,
(06:10):
individually, back and forth.
But if you put them on the samestructure, then something
interesting happens. Becausethen you know, some of them
moving in one direction, some onthe other directions. So it's
bit like you know, you havepeople pulling in, you know,
what you call it in English, andyou're pulling a tug of war. So
(06:33):
it should apply for people thatyou can actually hear ahead,
stand behind those people andjust hold the rope two fingers
the same here. So it makes mewonder it isn't me either. So
the forces that impact, thewhole structure is false or
canceled out with the axes, likeit goes down to less than a 10th
compared to having each one ofthese converters or energy
collectors that we call to be nomore individually as a separate
(06:56):
structure. So this is sort ofthe foundation for this, you can
say innovation, this inventionback then, where they start
saying, Okay, that was could besomething interesting, they
thought there was a way back in2008. So that nine, we got a
patent on that, and startedgoing into detail, okay, how can
(07:18):
we convert or how much energywe'll get out of this, what are
the issues, etcetera, etcetera.
And it started back then. Andthen I came into this together
with them in 2013. But mybackground, which is the non
technical side, so I like tobuild on all the other things,
you know, which is needed. Andit's, it's also it's quite
interesting when you talk aboutstartups and introduce
intrapreneurship. And stuff likethat is, it's not only the
(07:39):
technical, you know, things inthe product or the system, it is
everything are hunted, that hasto go up in, in a total a nice
way you need to proper fundingin the right competencies, the
right partners, the right youknow, all these things to move
your product ahead to developingespecially an offshore product
(08:01):
or for system like this. It's itis a long process. Yeah. So that
was the, the short explanationof some of these years for Yeah.
But so this is actually what'sinteresting. So the foundation
has this false cancellation, wecall it Yeah. Because then
(08:22):
suddenly, you can you can reducethe structure of things and
mooring, etc, and then focus on,you know, this energy conversion
into collectors. That's thesimple version. Because,
David Evans (08:34):
yeah, that's one of the things that really drew me
to this because I've typicallyseen wave energy being captured
more so in underwater turbinesor propellers, or there are some
that do collect the force of awave by moving a plate or
something. But the overalldesign of wave piston abilities
to capture the force of a wavethat move independently along
(08:57):
the same structure, and honestlylooks just very cool visually.
It's a such a different designthan I've typically seen. So I
was wondering if you could touchon maybe how I understand maybe
it's the movement, that's howthe TriCity is generated. But
where does the desalinated watercome into the effect? Yeah.
Michael Henricksen, WavePist (09:17):
So what we do is we try also to
keep the things as simple aspossible. It's always complex
when you're in the offshoresite, but but as simple as
possible. So what we do we workwith hydraulic system. So what
these plates they do take oneplate, we call them necessary in
energy collector, but then triesto pump you know, so the back
(09:37):
and forth movements is sucks andseawater, and then it pushes,
you know, this, you're into apressure pipe, and we increase
the pressure to 60 pounds. Sowhat would work when we take the
energy from the waves, and thenwe pressurize seawater, and that
pressure seawater, is thattransported via pressure pipe to
a conversion station? Yeah. Andthe interesting part here Is the
(10:00):
pressurized water you can use atleast for two things. One is you
can we can drive a turbine. Andwhat we use Pelton turbine, so
that spins around drives agenerator and we can produce the
electricity to the grid. Theother interesting part of the
pressure is seawater will besucked in and pressurize it is
pressurized seawater is what isneeded for reverse osmosis and
(10:24):
reverse osmosis. It's the mostefficient way of desalinated
seawater that has existeddevelopment, then actually, you
suck in seawater, you increasethe pressure to about 6065 70
bars depending on the system.
And then you pressure thatpressure as we go through the
membrane in this reverse osmosisplant, and you can then get the
sold out and get into potablewater. But our system always
(10:45):
takes the same pressure as waterin so we can actually use this
high pressure water into reverseosmosis plants. Moultrie is not
that easy, as I'm saying,because you need we need to pre
filter the water before it goesinto reverse osmosis to not to
destroy membranes and not toedit the clocks or we need to
clean the whole time. So that'sall some of the challenges here,
(11:06):
because you need to do highfilter, high pressure filtration
to put a pin not sure this oneactually the which is, if I'm
allowed to do that, and isn'tYeah, of course, it's a that's a
flirt one related to reverseosmosis. Because we're talking
with some of the existing versusprocess plants, they are very
interested in this because theycan see of course, instead of
they do this, and then theysuddenly come to you, or they
(11:29):
have to take electricity fromthe grid, which is produced
somewhere else. So there's a lotof losses on the way, then we
can actually connect directly tothis reverse osmosis plant,
either by doing this process, Ijust told you about all another
one, because they already havethis existing reverse osmosis
plant with all the things that Ineed, we can use our pressurized
water to pressurize our water.
(11:52):
Why is that interesting? That'sbecause you get a much higher
efficiency, you take ourpressurized water and convert it
in via turbine to electricitythat actually goes to the grid,
to the distribution system totransmission system essentially
says that, we can use the directin and get a very high, much
higher efficiency on this energyconversion side. So So in the
(12:15):
end, suddenly, we have threeways of using this yet. So it's
quite interesting. And this isalso what's very thrilling about
this, there's a lot ofattention. People are very
interested in this. And ofcourse, what we need to show now
that is this also works in fullscale. And we're not killed by
the big ways. We don't have, youknow, operational maintenance
(12:36):
that are too high cetera, etcetera. That's all the things
we're working on at the momentthat is getting our first full
scale system out in the AtlanticOcean at Grand Canyon.
David Evans (12:45):
That's so interesting. I mean, it does
make sense that there would bethat third out there. Can you
speak a bit about where the wavepiston systems are deployed
right now?
Michael Henricksen, WaveP (12:55):
Yeah, that's quite easy, because as of
right now, you know, we had onewe call the because we prepared
our full scale installationright now is right. We have a
Spanish daughter company in GranCanaria, one of our guys down
there is coordinating the workwe're doing at the moment, we
had an A trial installation, apre installation, we call it to
(13:18):
prepare for all this there wasback in from December 20 to
march 21 to test differentthings and mooring installations
and or to the local supplynetwork assessment. And based on
that knowledge, we've made someupgrades got some new you know,
agreements with suppliers etc.
And now we are preparing thewhole infrastructure at leasing,
you know, we need to have thispressure pipe the pipe to space
(13:40):
and it's a test area. So it is aplatform we take the pipe to
will meet the power generationunit with a turbine generator
connected, we need to have adesalination unit connect etc.
All these construction works goongoing right now. After that,
we'll have the install ourstructure, which is the mooring
in each in only two anchorpoints. And then we call it the
(14:03):
string line there and then wecan put on the energy creators
or take off whatever when wetested different things. And
those that will happen first onearound April May and then we
expect in September, to turn onthe commission so we can start
producing electricity and alsoto desalination with these
(14:23):
fullscale 2022 is going to bevery interesting.
David Evans (14:29):
Big Year, big year for Wave piston excited. Maybe
you all I'll have an update bythe time this podcast comes out,
they'll be able to reach out.
Yeah, so I guess when you have afull system deployed at full
scale, how much electricity orhow much desalinated water, are
you looking at being able toproduce just under an average
day or whatever? What would bethe peak values that you would
(14:51):
expect to be able to get to?
Michael Henricksen, WavePist (14:54):
So I think we should talk like
references because it alldepends on which look Patient we
are in somehow looking ahead fora poor way plan or is still good
enough to be the other wayplanets. A string, we call them
us now with just as like areference system where we have
32 Energy collectors on there,we expect to have at the
(15:16):
grandkid area where we are rightnow it's 650,000 kilowatt hour
per year. For $1, you can ofcourse add as many strings as
you want. In other locationslike the French Caribbean, we've
been looking at Martinique, weget nine, they alternate nine or
nine or 50 kilowatt hour whostring the same thing he says
(15:37):
because the wave climb is a bitmore stable and a bit more
energetic. And then if you goother places with much more
energy, if you can get a bitmore, but the formula is that
you don't want you don't careabout those very, very large
wait for the storms, you onlywant to look at the 90 98% 99%
of the time, it's the normalcondition sets where you need to
optimize your system for him. Soanything you can say, from 500
(16:01):
megawatts to 1000 megawatts forthe current system. So you can
see, and this is actuallysomething that, you know, over
time, we need to work with toincrease efficiency use of get
more energy on this and alsocause decrease the cost to get a
better cost per per kilowatthour.
David Evans (16:18):
How far are these systems deployed right now? And
I guess, are there areas wherethe wave energy is just too high
that you wouldn't considerputting these out?
Michael Henricksen, WaveP (16:29):
Yeah, not too high, actually. Because
no matter where we are, we needsome, some good, robust, and
also good systems that cansurvive these extreme
conditions. And they are more orless all the places where you
have waves, you also get somenasty large waves once in a
while. Yeah. So we need to beable to handle these, it's just
that we start with some areasright now. Probably, for
(16:52):
instance, where we are testingat the moment, which is quite
nice. It's not too extreme. Andit's, it's pretty much stable,
the waves coming in. So then weget a relatively good
efficiency, and we are able tosee what is happening etc. In
practice, we need to be able tohandle all the places where you
have a good wave climate. Andwhen you have a good wave
climate, you also get some niceextremes, like 1050, meter
(17:16):
waves, etc. Even more sometimes,
David Evans (17:19):
yeah, I'm just imagining you can't turn off the
wave. So sure, it makes it quiteinteresting actually installing
these projects? Because if youdon't have there's no low within
the within the ocean.
Michael Henricksen, WavePis (17:32):
No, you're right. It is a it's
actually it's it's a terribleplace to be. It's a lot of
energy, or there's a lot ofthings. Yeah. So the first, you
know, this is that we had ourthere, section, the picture here
behind me, some people can seethat. It's from the North Sea.
(17:52):
And we did a lot of thesethings, our sales together with
some, of course, good suppliersand partners. But I was also up
myself, you know, puttinggoggles on and tried to do
different stuff. So you reallyget to learn how difficult
difficult is to work on theocean. Also, that the system is
not available the whole time.
You can't just go out there andcheck things because then you
(18:13):
have like one or several weeksof bad weather. You just have to
say Okay, is there it was? Andof course we have some sensors,
you can see what is happening,but you don't really see it.
Yeah. So it is quite difficult.
And that's also the reason youcan say because a lot of people
are asking what happened waveenergy pen success yet, why
haven't we any competitors? AndI don't like when, when and so
(18:36):
on? And the simple answer isbecause it's more difficult. In
the old days, we know Denmark iswind energy with wind country,
yeah. Then this localblacksmith, he just built his
own little wind turbine, put itnext to his farm or whatever,
and then started working on thisgoing back and forth later, we
need to put something in thesea. Of course, we have test in
(18:58):
small tanks and in small waves,etc. But we need to get out in
the big waves. Yeah. And thatmakes it more difficult. So So
what we've done in the world,now we have taken them all low
hanging fruits of the renewableenergy, we're still going to use
that much more with much moresolar as needed in my mind. And
then we just need to add now weneed to add the wave energy
(19:19):
because it's a very largepotential. And we are getting
there. It's not only Ospitalseveral interesting companies in
the world now looking into thisor has been around for a long
time, but also simply what'scoming up. So this renewable
energy source, we also need thatto complement wind and solar
because the wave energy is onplaces actually time by shift
(19:41):
compared to wind and of coursesolar energy is in the daytime.
It's not in the nighttime. So byhaving several renewable energy
sources makes it much moreinteresting. It's better to
stabilize the grid and sort ofhaving a total system viewmont
getting renewables at 100%renewables.
David Evans (19:57):
Yeah, absolutely.
We can't just look at renewablesas Only wind and solar, there's
so many other potential energiesout there. And wave energy is
definitely a very obvious onethat some people may just look
at and say, Yeah, it's crazy tobe out there and in these big
waves and trying to capture thatenergy, but that's the energy
that will be coming back timeand time again, is reliable. And
(20:18):
we can count on Yeah. Yeah, Iguess, do you have a rough sense
on the amount of energy orpotential energy that could be
produced through from fromcapturing wave energy?
Michael Henricksen, WaveP (20:32):
Yeah, there are several articles,
papers, scientists have beendoing all these things. So So I
think the what I've seen is likea theoretical the potential of
2000 Pika watts, which is threetimes more, or whatever, when
today in the world, but thatlike theoretical sort of
(20:53):
capacity, potentially insane?
Yeah, it is large density of theenergy in the ways it's more
much more dense, of course,compared to wind like this. So
you actually have more energy ina small area, if you're able to
harvest it, of course. So thepotential is large, it will be
as large as wind can be, butsolar power and wind power was a
good start. For like, last 2030years, we need to catch up to
(21:17):
that. And then of course, it'sdifficult to compare this also
one also asked the whole times,okay, what is your price, its
achievement and wins. Okay, comeon, we just, you know, we have
six, or how much it's not five600 key or when we've had some
time, we're not sure when we'vehad more than 20 years now on
our show me and see that we'vebeen able to reduce the cost
(21:39):
that much because of economiesof scale, but also because of
innovations of making them muchmore efficient and sizes, size
size, we have to go throughthose development cycles. Well,
I don't think it's gonna take aslong as that because we,
generally in the world, we havea faster development track of
these things, but also that wecan have many systems out there
(21:59):
to sort of optimize oursolution. Yeah. So we started
another level. But we stillbelieve that this is sort of a
level that can be competitive,especially if you look at what
we are focusing on to say in thebeginning, let's look at islands
isolated coastal communities,hotels, resorts and stuff like
that. These are not triple digitmegawatt systems, they're like
(22:22):
two fives in two megawattsystems, they have a very high
price and teaching. And theteacher generated power, many of
them fossil fuels once replaceit, so we can go in and replace
everything, but at least go inand be a big part of the
solution for throwing these intogenerators out. And then we'll
get that price on levelized costof energy to cap cost of energy,
(22:44):
that is, like 30 to 40 eurocents for the US dollar same per
kilowatt hour. And that price wecan compete with, of course, we
need to start somewhere to getinto the market. And then we can
sort of get the economies ofscale over time, also,
David Evans (23:01):
just providing that ability to have a renewable
energy generation system, orwater generation system in those
remote islands. And that's aperfect example for where a
system like this could be veryuseful right now, but I mean,
everywhere. I mean, I want oneby one in my backyard, too, if I
(23:21):
was right on the ocean.
Michael Henricksen, WaveP (23:23):
Yeah, well, because these these remote
island states are because manyof the, because we're talking
with some of these people thatare leaving these places and
want to have a system like ours,they don't have enough land
space, you know, it's difficult,you know, in Mauritius, Maldives
put out last winter, but ingeneral, it doesn't really make
sense that and it's also a verydistributed, so they are looking
(23:43):
at other solutions. And this isabout having a non intrusive
system, because you can actuallysee from from shore, because
it's under the water, and youdon't take up land space. So
that is very interesting forthem, of course, and it's nice,
it's part of the solution thatwe're coming up with this
system.
David Evans (24:01):
Yeah, I'm curious, is it simply using buoys? Or how
do you plan to protect the wavepiston system from marine
traffic or other boats? And areyou really competing with areas
where there would be a lot oftraffic?
Michael Henricksen, WaveP (24:14):
Yeah, well, I think that is a general
concern or is it's a chance allover the world because it's
increased traffic has increasedpressure on ocean space. In
general, yeah, aquaculturefishery, you have tourism you
have normal read traffic. Sothat is it is an issue and it
has to be planned very carefullyin all the different locations
(24:37):
where we also want to be becausewe need to have an exclusive
zone where this system will be.
The nice thing is that therewill also be like a sanctuary
for fish and both flora andfauna, you can say yeah, because
you're you're not allowed to gofish. They're not allowed to
have traffic there. So they arejust, you know, thriving, and we
become just like an artificialreef. So this is Of course, a
(24:58):
concern, we made some analysisagain that Martinique to see
where could we be assessed andcompared to the other activities
that was ongoing fisheries, etc?
And you all always, you know,question, okay, especially from
the fishery, okay, but then wecan't face the No, but we build
(25:18):
up another economy because weneed to give operational
maintenance of this that might,you know, help a bit. And then
we have to fish, some of theother locations, that is sort of
the trade off, you could saywith these things. But it's also
with offshore wind, it's thesame, you're not allowed to, to
navigate in those areas. Andthen, of course, combining
(25:38):
offshore wind and wave energy,you know, that is, of course,
also interesting, because youalready have some areas, and if
you have good waves there, forinstance, in the North Sea, we
should also have wave energy,because then we increase the
capacity of the whole area, youand then we use who they were
better, of course respect andyou need to do operation and
maintenance of the differentdevices and of the, of the wind
(26:00):
turbines, etcetera. And that is,of course, you'd like something
right now in the Danishgovernment has just recently or
last year was agreed on, oninvesting in an energy Island
and the island is is one of themega trends at the moment. So
they were building energy out inthe middle of the North Sea, to
start with three gigawatts ofwind and obtain key what have
been afterwards, and then exportthat to different countries
(26:23):
around the North Sea. But ofcourse, now we have this nice
area, we should also put waveenergy. So we get more out of
this area, together with
David Evans (26:31):
just put it all in there. Yeah. I'm curious, what
are the potential environmentalimpacts of a wave piston system?
And in full operation?
Michael Henricksen, WaveP (26:43):
Yeah.
Again, short answer we don'tknow yet actually, because we
the full scale systems we'reputting in there's an
environmental monitoringprogram, at the same time doing
that from from the test sitewhere we are, can they also come
and look at, you know, twomeasurements, etc. What we can
see from the system we've donein the North Sea has not been a
scientific study is just that wehave fish and the floor, and we
(27:05):
have biofouling, for good or forworse, you know, on the system.
And we've had both dolphins andseals, etc, around it. But
that's, of course, not thescientific approach we've had so
far this, there have been othermore scientific approach on
other wave energy devices, whichhave not shown any negative
impact and flow profile. But ofcourse, as WaveNet, it is not a
(27:25):
mature market, there's nocommercial installations, yet no
last installations yet. So youcannot say 1% Certainty say with
this will happen, this will nothappen. We need to show we need
to do make scientific studies onthese things. And see what
happened when we put moresystems out there. In our
system, we don't have any sortof polluting materials you could
(27:47):
say. So toxic materials in it isquite small. As you can see,
footprint we have been put inthe ETrack and has put them in
and with our system. So that'swhat we touching the seabed with
them with this. And then what wecan see is that then growth
happens on the system, thenthere will be some sound. But
(28:07):
again, it's very limited soundand earlier scientific studies
and others have not shown anynegative effect from that. But
that needs to be studied more.
David Evans (28:19):
Yeah, that was gonna be my next question about
underwater noise and its impacton on marine life as well. So be
interesting to see how thatdevelops with the full scale
array.
Michael Henricksen, WavePis (28:31):
But exactly, but it because to me,
that has to be also looked atlarger ratio, because for SQL
devices, if you those thoseanalysis have been done and no
negative impact of this, youknow that one? So when you just
see.
David Evans (28:43):
Yeah, I was just thinking to with a system like
this as it continues to maturewhen you're out there. I'm
curious with the system that youhave already had out on a
smaller scale. Was there atimeline where you needed to go
out and either remove debris orthere was a buildup of barnacles
or clams or the it was becomingan issue to the efficiency of
(29:07):
the system? Yeah.
Michael Henricksen, WavePist (29:08):
So the thing is, it depends on what
type of file filing we have inthe system. But what is the
other challenge we have withthis system we have in the
northeast, actually that we havegot a lot of muscles on our
booster boosters are placed ineach intestine shown in Quincy,
but also the tension in thewhole system. And they but they
started getting heavier. Sothen, of course, the Bucha is
(29:29):
not there. So we had to scrapeup the muscles. So that's one
thing that part of the operationmaintenance, you need to clean
for that. And then of course,what we looking at is to look at
the material that werebiofouling was not be as extreme
as with some things we don'twant to use too much, you know,
painted by off on the paint. Sowe also look into copper side
(29:51):
glass paper material, which canbe done so it'll be less
biopharma things, but But as forefficiency, we've not seen
anything that Then it but thatis also remains to be seen and
things because when we talk withpeople that have exploited
biofouling, it can change almostfrom one page to another page,
what type of bow find betterthings. The tests we did in the
(30:15):
in Gran Canaria. Last time herethese three, three months, we
got quite a lot of buyer file,but not inside the system, but
just you know, on our field sayswe have some raw fields coming
in, and they have to be clean.
So they have to be easy to takeoff and on as part of the
operation. I mean, besides thatthere was a lot of growth, but
not something that wasdisturbing. Negative for us,
David Evans (30:36):
I guess it would depend on the area that is
deployed. Exactly. That's,
Michael Henricksen, Wave (30:40):
that's what we're hoping to do what
we've been told also from fromit.
David Evans (30:44):
Yeah. Well, I've been learning so much, this has
been fantastic. And for many ofour listeners here in Canada,
how can we maybe myself being ina landlocked province? How can a
landlocked Canadian or anyonelistening to this podcast help
support we've piston all the wayin Denmark and wave energy
(31:05):
generating? Yeah, actually,there
Michael Henricksen, WavePis (31:07):
are some Canadian colleagues of
mine, that are also working withVAT and decent nation. So of
course, supporting sort of thewhole section, you know, getting
it up in what will be importantfor us and for the whole sector
is to get you know, the messageout, and then the pressure on
(31:28):
both the politicians decisionmaking this because we need that
also. So that's what we're doingthat the whole time by our
membership organizations andstuff like that. So that's one
thing. And then of course, alsoin Canada, you get to some very
nice title things on it, atleast on the on the on the end,
(31:49):
then on the West Coast, verygood wave climate, they're also
things. So supporting theseinitiatives in ocean energy as
such, but also wave energy, ofcourse. And then talking with
people and getting out on in themedia, like you do now that it
always helps. Because whenpoliticians start hearing it,
there's going to be pressureabout all these things and also
(32:11):
want to support this, then wecan get into sort of this
section moving on faster than weare moving right along.
David Evans (32:18):
Wonderful.
Wonderful. And my my finalquestion, How did you find
yourself a part of this team?
What led you to where you arecurrently as the CEO of wave
piston?
Michael Henricksen, WaveP (32:28):
Yeah, that's sort of you can say, the
usual mid 40 crisis, you can sayI want I want to do something
that really is all okay, thiscould be something that will
make a big difference in theworld. Yeah, I have a background
actually been working in the inthe financial industry with
large projects and differenttypes of things with the capital
(32:49):
markets, etc. And I was juststarting to think it's a no, I
want to do something else use mymy competences as something that
I could see make a largedifference. And I like to build
up things also like thesethings. So that was sort of the
combination. And then I knew oneof the events is have heard
about the innovation model we'llbe doing. And they are not the
(33:11):
best in getting, you know, allthe other stuff around to get
this to work. They want to focuson the technical side of things.
So okay, let me take that one.
You take the other one. And thenlet's make a big difference
together. So that was sort oflike the driving force for this.
And then yeah, we've been goingon since now, almost, yeah, over
eight years now. I've been partof this
David Evans (33:32):
incredible, incredible, thank you so much
for spending the time to speakwith me today. I'm hoping that
all the listeners will havepicked up something here and
there. And we're gonna get soexcited about wave energy. And
we're going to be looking forwave energy options in Canada.
And I'll be posting links tosupport wave piston, but also
(33:53):
Canadian wave energy as well. Sothank you so much for spending
the time to speak with me today.
Michael Henricksen, WavePis (33:57):
But thank you, too. It's been a
pleasure. And yeah, pleasefollow us, you know, both the
whole sector and also wait,paste. We have a LinkedIn page
where we do updates, you canalways see nice pictures,
videos, what is happening. Andthen we'll have to come to
Canada and install some systemsthere as well.
David Evans (34:14):
There we go.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for listeningto today's deep dive episode
with Michael Henrickson, the CEOof wave piston. And thanks so
much to Michael for taking thetime to speak with me. He's a
great speaker and is clearlyvery passionate about this type
(34:36):
of energy. And I think it holdsso much promise for the future.
And I'm so excited to see whereit goes. I'll be sure to add
some updates on where they'reactually at with their process.
Once this episode is released,check out the show notes.
There'll be updated for sure.
But hey, want to keep updatedyourself? Be sure to check them
out at wave piston.dk That's ourmain website. You can also
follow them on LinkedIn. Theypost regular updates on there as
(34:58):
well. up on their website, theyhave a lot more information and
some really cool informationalvideos that really helped break
down the process and help youvisualize the actual system
we're talking about with theseenergy collector plates. I'm the
host and producer David Evans.
And I just like to thank therest of the team, specifically
Paula poem, and Lee Burton, andthe rest of the aquatic
(35:21):
biosphere board. Thanks for allof your help. And to learn more
about the aquatic biosphereproject. And what we're doing
right here in Alberta tellingthe story of water, you can
check us out at aquaticbiosphere.ca. And we also have
launched our new media company,a b n aquatic biosphere network,
which you can find that thepublic place dot online and
(35:44):
search for the aquatic biospherenetwork channel, where we will
actually be posting all of thevideo episodes that we're going
to be creating this year. Sotune in, they will be out for
the next little while, but veryexcited to start sharing video
content as well as ourinterviews. Next week, we will
be releasing our deep diveepisode with Dr. Steve Grassi
from geothermal Canada, where welearn all about the potential we
(36:07):
have in Canada to creategeothermal energy, and actually
how we have so much potential,but we're not using it yet. And
why is that? Tune in? You won'twant to miss it. If you have any
questions or comments about theshow, we'd love to hear them.
Email us at conservation ataquatic biosphere.org. Please
don't forget to like, share andsubscribe. Leave us a review. It
(36:30):
really helps us out. Thanks andit's been a splash
On today's deep dive episode, we're talking to
Michael Henrickson, the CEO ofwave piston. Wave piston is a
Danish company that's focusingon how we can turn wave energy
into electrical potential, andalso desalinated seawater. We
talk about the potential of waveenergy for the future of energy
production, we talk about theenvironmental impacts, we talk
(00:26):
about the difficulties of evenworking in the ocean, especially
in an area where you're tryingto target being in giant huge
waves. Now, one note before weget started, unfortunately, the
audio for this interview soundeddifferently when we were
recording it than when itactually came out in the
recording. So Michael might be abit hard to understand. But all
(00:47):
of the information he has issuper, super interesting. It's
well worth the lesson. Alright,that's enough for me. Let's get
this thing started. So sit backrelax and get ready to learn a
little bit more about creatingelectricity from waves that sir,
(01:09):
Barney, G. Nick nippy will meanto be low in zero to marry a
(01:30):
cheap, Chinese way. Why water wedoing? And how can we do better?
Your one stop shop foreverything water related from
discussing water, its use andthe organisms that depend on it
(01:52):
for all the global issues thatyou really never knew all had to
do with water. I'm your host,David Evans from the aquatic
biosphere project. And I justwant to ask you something. What
are we doing? And how can we dobetter?
(02:18):
I and welcome back to anotherdeep dive episode of the what
are we doing podcast where we'retalking to Michael Henrickson
from a wave piston. I'm soexcited to introduce Michael and
get started learning about waveenergy. So how about you
introduce yourself and let ourlisteners know a little bit
about yourself?
Michael Henricksen, WaveP (02:38):
Yeah, thanks, David. Yes, well, I'm
Michael Hendrickson. I'm the CEOof wave piston. Also one of the
founders of wave piston one ofthe only non technical non
engineers in the companyactually more Business
Commercial Background, I've beeninvolved in wave energy since
end of 2013 and CEO of wavepiston since 2014. And in Wave
(03:03):
piston, yeah, as you say, we areworking with the energy of the
waves to convert them tosomething usable, which is we
can convert it both via to mygenerator to electricity. And we
can also use the energy in thewave for desalination via
reverse osmosis plants. So thisis sort of our basics of our
system.
David Evans (03:23):
Very cool to marrying not only generating
electricity, but alsodesalination. That's such a such
a unique concept of having bothbe part of the design, rather
than one specifically fuelingthe other. Where did this idea
come from? Yes, it's
Michael Henricksen, Wa (03:39):
actually my clever colleagues that came
with the idea so two otherfounders were also the inventors
that's Martin and Christian,they are the engineers here what
are some of the engineers nowthe company they had a common
background working withdifferent types of projects,
development projects, etc. Andfacing has a background before
that he was in the offshoreindustry. And he was sort of
(04:01):
looking at this the waves and hesaid, Okay, it's quite strange,
why it hasn't been possible toharvest the energy from the
waves in an efficient way tomake something sort of actually
that's viable that could becompetitive. Yeah. And the
reason is of course, it is quitedifficult. So we have to be it
is difficult to work in the seain the offshore not in the
(04:21):
normal conditions, but when youknow, the storms come and the
very large ways that there is weneed to have some good storm
protection systems as well. Butall in all, it's a very hot
environment they were theystarted analyzing this, see,
okay, what type of concepts werethere in the market and what
were the positive things andnegative things about those? And
(04:43):
then so far out that many ofthese concepts have had evolved
started from someone having ideahow to convert the entity into
waves, which is actually not sohow to do like, you know,
sitting with a rubber dog inyour bathtub. This is not
actually the main issue aproblem is not how to do it. But
it's actually to understand thetotal cost structure of the
(05:06):
whole system. It's not only theones you know, the things that
move covered, but the wholesystem, all the forces and all
the things you have to handleboth in normal conditions, these
extreme conditions. So they werelooking at that, and they they
came up with this concept wehave right now, try to do it
briefly to explain how it lookslike. Because that's, that's
(05:27):
also the reason I came intothis, I think it's really very
interesting and innovative andthe genius concept, you could
say, because instead of sort offighting the forces, they have
the ocean, they're sort ofplaying with the forces. Yeah,
so what we have is our system islike, you have a plate like a
plate in the water standingvertically in the plate in the
(05:49):
water, when the wave pass by theplate goes back and forth, this
back and forth movement, thisbackpack, a portable, you can
use sort of you can convert tosomething interesting. But what
happens and others have donethat that's nothing either
flipping up or down, whatever.
But what happens if you havemany of these plates, we call
them energy collectors. So maybethese plates besides each other,
and the wave pass by them witheach work, you know,
(06:10):
individually, back and forth.
But if you put them on the samestructure, then something
interesting happens. Becausethen you know, some of them
moving in one direction, some onthe other directions. So it's
bit like you know, you havepeople pulling in, you know,
what you call it in English, andyou're pulling a tug of war. So
(06:33):
it should apply for people thatyou can actually hear ahead,
stand behind those people andjust hold the rope two fingers
the same here. So it makes mewonder it isn't me either. So
the forces that impact, thewhole structure is false or
canceled out with the axes, likeit goes down to less than a 10th
compared to having each one ofthese converters or energy
collectors that we call to be nomore individually as a separate
(06:56):
structure. So this is sort ofthe foundation for this, you can
say innovation, this inventionback then, where they start
saying, Okay, that was could besomething interesting, they
thought there was a way back in2008. So that nine, we got a
patent on that, and startedgoing into detail, okay, how can
(07:18):
we convert or how much energywe'll get out of this, what are
the issues, etcetera, etcetera.
And it started back then. Andthen I came into this together
with them in 2013. But mybackground, which is the non
technical side, so I like tobuild on all the other things,
you know, which is needed. Andit's, it's also it's quite
interesting when you talk aboutstartups and introduce
intrapreneurship. And stuff likethat is, it's not only the
(07:39):
technical, you know, things inthe product or the system, it is
everything are hunted, that hasto go up in, in a total a nice
way you need to proper fundingin the right competencies, the
right partners, the right youknow, all these things to move
your product ahead to developingespecially an offshore product
(08:01):
or for system like this. It's itis a long process. Yeah. So that
was the, the short explanationof some of these years for Yeah.
But so this is actually what'sinteresting. So the foundation
has this false cancellation, wecall it Yeah. Because then
(08:22):
suddenly, you can you can reducethe structure of things and
mooring, etc, and then focus on,you know, this energy conversion
into collectors. That's thesimple version. Because,
David Evans (08:34):
yeah, that's one of the things that really drew me
to this because I've typicallyseen wave energy being captured
more so in underwater turbinesor propellers, or there are some
that do collect the force of awave by moving a plate or
something. But the overalldesign of wave piston abilities
to capture the force of a wavethat move independently along
(08:57):
the same structure, and honestlylooks just very cool visually.
It's a such a different designthan I've typically seen. So I
was wondering if you could touchon maybe how I understand maybe
it's the movement, that's howthe TriCity is generated. But
where does the desalinated watercome into the effect? Yeah.
Michael Henricksen, WavePist (09:17):
So what we do is we try also to
keep the things as simple aspossible. It's always complex
when you're in the offshoresite, but but as simple as
possible. So what we do we workwith hydraulic system. So what
these plates they do take oneplate, we call them necessary in
energy collector, but then triesto pump you know, so the back
(09:37):
and forth movements is sucks andseawater, and then it pushes,
you know, this, you're into apressure pipe, and we increase
the pressure to 60 pounds. Sowhat would work when we take the
energy from the waves, and thenwe pressurize seawater, and that
pressure seawater, is thattransported via pressure pipe to
a conversion station? Yeah. Andthe interesting part here Is the
(10:00):
pressurized water you can use atleast for two things. One is you
can we can drive a turbine. Andwhat we use Pelton turbine, so
that spins around drives agenerator and we can produce the
electricity to the grid. Theother interesting part of the
pressure is seawater will besucked in and pressurize it is
pressurized seawater is what isneeded for reverse osmosis and
(10:24):
reverse osmosis. It's the mostefficient way of desalinated
seawater that has existeddevelopment, then actually, you
suck in seawater, you increasethe pressure to about 6065 70
bars depending on the system.
And then you pressure thatpressure as we go through the
membrane in this reverse osmosisplant, and you can then get the
sold out and get into potablewater. But our system always
(10:45):
takes the same pressure as waterin so we can actually use this
high pressure water into reverseosmosis plants. Moultrie is not
that easy, as I'm saying,because you need we need to pre
filter the water before it goesinto reverse osmosis to not to
destroy membranes and not toedit the clocks or we need to
clean the whole time. So that'sall some of the challenges here,
(11:06):
because you need to do highfilter, high pressure filtration
to put a pin not sure this oneactually the which is, if I'm
allowed to do that, and isn'tYeah, of course, it's a that's a
flirt one related to reverseosmosis. Because we're talking
with some of the existing versusprocess plants, they are very
interested in this because theycan see of course, instead of
they do this, and then theysuddenly come to you, or they
(11:29):
have to take electricity fromthe grid, which is produced
somewhere else. So there's a lotof losses on the way, then we
can actually connect directly tothis reverse osmosis plant,
either by doing this process, Ijust told you about all another
one, because they already havethis existing reverse osmosis
plant with all the things that Ineed, we can use our pressurized
water to pressurize our water.
(11:52):
Why is that interesting? That'sbecause you get a much higher
efficiency, you take ourpressurized water and convert it
in via turbine to electricitythat actually goes to the grid,
to the distribution system totransmission system essentially
says that, we can use the directin and get a very high, much
higher efficiency on this energyconversion side. So So in the
(12:15):
end, suddenly, we have threeways of using this yet. So it's
quite interesting. And this isalso what's very thrilling about
this, there's a lot ofattention. People are very
interested in this. And ofcourse, what we need to show now
that is this also works in fullscale. And we're not killed by
the big ways. We don't have, youknow, operational maintenance
(12:36):
that are too high cetera, etcetera. That's all the things
we're working on at the momentthat is getting our first full
scale system out in the AtlanticOcean at Grand Canyon.
David Evans (12:45):
That's so interesting. I mean, it does
make sense that there would bethat third out there. Can you
speak a bit about where the wavepiston systems are deployed
right now?
Michael Henricksen, WaveP (12:55):
Yeah, that's quite easy, because as of
right now, you know, we had onewe call the because we prepared
our full scale installationright now is right. We have a
Spanish daughter company in GranCanaria, one of our guys down
there is coordinating the workwe're doing at the moment, we
had an A trial installation, apre installation, we call it to
(13:18):
prepare for all this there wasback in from December 20 to
march 21 to test differentthings and mooring installations
and or to the local supplynetwork assessment. And based on
that knowledge, we've made someupgrades got some new you know,
agreements with suppliers etc.
And now we are preparing thewhole infrastructure at leasing,
you know, we need to have thispressure pipe the pipe to space
(13:40):
and it's a test area. So it is aplatform we take the pipe to
will meet the power generationunit with a turbine generator
connected, we need to have adesalination unit connect etc.
All these construction works goongoing right now. After that,
we'll have the install ourstructure, which is the mooring
in each in only two anchorpoints. And then we call it the
(14:03):
string line there and then wecan put on the energy creators
or take off whatever when wetested different things. And
those that will happen first onearound April May and then we
expect in September, to turn onthe commission so we can start
producing electricity and alsoto desalination with these
(14:23):
fullscale 2022 is going to bevery interesting.
David Evans (14:29):
Big Year, big year for Wave piston excited. Maybe
you all I'll have an update bythe time this podcast comes out,
they'll be able to reach out.
Yeah, so I guess when you have afull system deployed at full
scale, how much electricity orhow much desalinated water, are
you looking at being able toproduce just under an average
day or whatever? What would bethe peak values that you would
(14:51):
expect to be able to get to?
Michael Henricksen, WavePist (14:54):
So I think we should talk like
references because it alldepends on which look Patient we
are in somehow looking ahead fora poor way plan or is still good
enough to be the other wayplanets. A string, we call them
us now with just as like areference system where we have
32 Energy collectors on there,we expect to have at the
(15:16):
grandkid area where we are rightnow it's 650,000 kilowatt hour
per year. For $1, you can ofcourse add as many strings as
you want. In other locationslike the French Caribbean, we've
been looking at Martinique, weget nine, they alternate nine or
nine or 50 kilowatt hour whostring the same thing he says
(15:37):
because the wave climb is a bitmore stable and a bit more
energetic. And then if you goother places with much more
energy, if you can get a bitmore, but the formula is that
you don't want you don't careabout those very, very large
wait for the storms, you onlywant to look at the 90 98% 99%
of the time, it's the normalcondition sets where you need to
optimize your system for him. Soanything you can say, from 500
(16:01):
megawatts to 1000 megawatts forthe current system. So you can
see, and this is actuallysomething that, you know, over
time, we need to work with toincrease efficiency use of get
more energy on this and alsocause decrease the cost to get a
better cost per per kilowatthour.
David Evans (16:18):
How far are these systems deployed right now? And
I guess, are there areas wherethe wave energy is just too high
that you wouldn't considerputting these out?
Michael Henricksen, WaveP (16:29):
Yeah, not too high, actually. Because
no matter where we are, we needsome, some good, robust, and
also good systems that cansurvive these extreme
conditions. And they are more orless all the places where you
have waves, you also get somenasty large waves once in a
while. Yeah. So we need to beable to handle these, it's just
that we start with some areasright now. Probably, for
(16:52):
instance, where we are testingat the moment, which is quite
nice. It's not too extreme. Andit's, it's pretty much stable,
the waves coming in. So then weget a relatively good
efficiency, and we are able tosee what is happening etc. In
practice, we need to be able tohandle all the places where you
have a good wave climate. Andwhen you have a good wave
climate, you also get some niceextremes, like 1050, meter
(17:16):
waves, etc. Even more sometimes,
David Evans (17:19):
yeah, I'm just imagining you can't turn off the
wave. So sure, it makes it quiteinteresting actually installing
these projects? Because if youdon't have there's no low within
the within the ocean.
Michael Henricksen, WavePis (17:32):
No, you're right. It is a it's
actually it's it's a terribleplace to be. It's a lot of
energy, or there's a lot ofthings. Yeah. So the first, you
know, this is that we had ourthere, section, the picture here
behind me, some people can seethat. It's from the North Sea.
(17:52):
And we did a lot of thesethings, our sales together with
some, of course, good suppliersand partners. But I was also up
myself, you know, puttinggoggles on and tried to do
different stuff. So you reallyget to learn how difficult
difficult is to work on theocean. Also, that the system is
not available the whole time.
You can't just go out there andcheck things because then you
(18:13):
have like one or several weeksof bad weather. You just have to
say Okay, is there it was? Andof course we have some sensors,
you can see what is happening,but you don't really see it.
Yeah. So it is quite difficult.
And that's also the reason youcan say because a lot of people
are asking what happened waveenergy pen success yet, why
haven't we any competitors? AndI don't like when, when and so
(18:36):
on? And the simple answer isbecause it's more difficult. In
the old days, we know Denmark iswind energy with wind country,
yeah. Then this localblacksmith, he just built his
own little wind turbine, put itnext to his farm or whatever,
and then started working on thisgoing back and forth later, we
need to put something in thesea. Of course, we have test in
(18:58):
small tanks and in small waves,etc. But we need to get out in
the big waves. Yeah. And thatmakes it more difficult. So So
what we've done in the world,now we have taken them all low
hanging fruits of the renewableenergy, we're still going to use
that much more with much moresolar as needed in my mind. And
then we just need to add now weneed to add the wave energy
(19:19):
because it's a very largepotential. And we are getting
there. It's not only Ospitalseveral interesting companies in
the world now looking into thisor has been around for a long
time, but also simply what'scoming up. So this renewable
energy source, we also need thatto complement wind and solar
because the wave energy is onplaces actually time by shift
(19:41):
compared to wind and of coursesolar energy is in the daytime.
It's not in the nighttime. So byhaving several renewable energy
sources makes it much moreinteresting. It's better to
stabilize the grid and sort ofhaving a total system viewmont
getting renewables at 100%renewables.
David Evans (19:57):
Yeah, absolutely.
We can't just look at renewablesas Only wind and solar, there's
so many other potential energiesout there. And wave energy is
definitely a very obvious onethat some people may just look
at and say, Yeah, it's crazy tobe out there and in these big
waves and trying to capture thatenergy, but that's the energy
that will be coming back timeand time again, is reliable. And
(20:18):
we can count on Yeah. Yeah, Iguess, do you have a rough sense
on the amount of energy orpotential energy that could be
produced through from fromcapturing wave energy?
Michael Henricksen, WaveP (20:32):
Yeah, there are several articles,
papers, scientists have beendoing all these things. So So I
think the what I've seen is likea theoretical the potential of
2000 Pika watts, which is threetimes more, or whatever, when
today in the world, but thatlike theoretical sort of
(20:53):
capacity, potentially insane?
Yeah, it is large density of theenergy in the ways it's more
much more dense, of course,compared to wind like this. So
you actually have more energy ina small area, if you're able to
harvest it, of course. So thepotential is large, it will be
as large as wind can be, butsolar power and wind power was a
good start. For like, last 2030years, we need to catch up to
(21:17):
that. And then of course, it'sdifficult to compare this also
one also asked the whole times,okay, what is your price, its
achievement and wins. Okay, comeon, we just, you know, we have
six, or how much it's not five600 key or when we've had some
time, we're not sure when we'vehad more than 20 years now on
our show me and see that we'vebeen able to reduce the cost
(21:39):
that much because of economiesof scale, but also because of
innovations of making them muchmore efficient and sizes, size
size, we have to go throughthose development cycles. Well,
I don't think it's gonna take aslong as that because we,
generally in the world, we havea faster development track of
these things, but also that wecan have many systems out there
(21:59):
to sort of optimize oursolution. Yeah. So we started
another level. But we stillbelieve that this is sort of a
level that can be competitive,especially if you look at what
we are focusing on to say in thebeginning, let's look at islands
isolated coastal communities,hotels, resorts and stuff like
that. These are not triple digitmegawatt systems, they're like
(22:22):
two fives in two megawattsystems, they have a very high
price and teaching. And theteacher generated power, many of
them fossil fuels once replaceit, so we can go in and replace
everything, but at least go inand be a big part of the
solution for throwing these intogenerators out. And then we'll
get that price on levelized costof energy to cap cost of energy,
(22:44):
that is, like 30 to 40 eurocents for the US dollar same per
kilowatt hour. And that price wecan compete with, of course, we
need to start somewhere to getinto the market. And then we can
sort of get the economies ofscale over time, also,
David Evans (23:01):
just providing that ability to have a renewable
energy generation system, orwater generation system in those
remote islands. And that's aperfect example for where a
system like this could be veryuseful right now, but I mean,
everywhere. I mean, I want oneby one in my backyard, too, if I
(23:21):
was right on the ocean.
Michael Henricksen, WaveP (23:23):
Yeah, well, because these these remote
island states are because manyof the, because we're talking
with some of these people thatare leaving these places and
want to have a system like ours,they don't have enough land
space, you know, it's difficult,you know, in Mauritius, Maldives
put out last winter, but ingeneral, it doesn't really make
sense that and it's also a verydistributed, so they are looking
(23:43):
at other solutions. And this isabout having a non intrusive
system, because you can actuallysee from from shore, because
it's under the water, and youdon't take up land space. So
that is very interesting forthem, of course, and it's nice,
it's part of the solution thatwe're coming up with this
system.
David Evans (24:01):
Yeah, I'm curious, is it simply using buoys? Or how
do you plan to protect the wavepiston system from marine
traffic or other boats? And areyou really competing with areas
where there would be a lot oftraffic?
Michael Henricksen, WaveP (24:14):
Yeah, well, I think that is a general
concern or is it's a chance allover the world because it's
increased traffic has increasedpressure on ocean space. In
general, yeah, aquaculturefishery, you have tourism you
have normal read traffic. Sothat is it is an issue and it
has to be planned very carefullyin all the different locations
(24:37):
where we also want to be becausewe need to have an exclusive
zone where this system will be.
The nice thing is that therewill also be like a sanctuary
for fish and both flora andfauna, you can say yeah, because
you're you're not allowed to gofish. They're not allowed to
have traffic there. So they arejust, you know, thriving, and we
become just like an artificialreef. So this is Of course, a
(24:58):
concern, we made some analysisagain that Martinique to see
where could we be assessed andcompared to the other activities
that was ongoing fisheries, etc?
And you all always, you know,question, okay, especially from
the fishery, okay, but then wecan't face the No, but we build
(25:18):
up another economy because weneed to give operational
maintenance of this that might,you know, help a bit. And then
we have to fish, some of theother locations, that is sort of
the trade off, you could saywith these things. But it's also
with offshore wind, it's thesame, you're not allowed to, to
navigate in those areas. Andthen, of course, combining
(25:38):
offshore wind and wave energy,you know, that is, of course,
also interesting, because youalready have some areas, and if
you have good waves there, forinstance, in the North Sea, we
should also have wave energy,because then we increase the
capacity of the whole area, youand then we use who they were
better, of course respect andyou need to do operation and
maintenance of the differentdevices and of the, of the wind
(26:00):
turbines, etcetera. And that is,of course, you'd like something
right now in the Danishgovernment has just recently or
last year was agreed on, oninvesting in an energy Island
and the island is is one of themega trends at the moment. So
they were building energy out inthe middle of the North Sea, to
start with three gigawatts ofwind and obtain key what have
been afterwards, and then exportthat to different countries
(26:23):
around the North Sea. But ofcourse, now we have this nice
area, we should also put waveenergy. So we get more out of
this area, together with
David Evans (26:31):
just put it all in there. Yeah. I'm curious, what
are the potential environmentalimpacts of a wave piston system?
And in full operation?
Michael Henricksen, WaveP (26:43):
Yeah.
Again, short answer we don'tknow yet actually, because we
the full scale systems we'reputting in there's an
environmental monitoringprogram, at the same time doing
that from from the test sitewhere we are, can they also come
and look at, you know, twomeasurements, etc. What we can
see from the system we've donein the North Sea has not been a
scientific study is just that wehave fish and the floor, and we
(27:05):
have biofouling, for good or forworse, you know, on the system.
And we've had both dolphins andseals, etc, around it. But
that's, of course, not thescientific approach we've had so
far this, there have been othermore scientific approach on
other wave energy devices, whichhave not shown any negative
impact and flow profile. But ofcourse, as WaveNet, it is not a
(27:25):
mature market, there's nocommercial installations, yet no
last installations yet. So youcannot say 1% Certainty say with
this will happen, this will nothappen. We need to show we need
to do make scientific studies onthese things. And see what
happened when we put moresystems out there. In our
system, we don't have any sortof polluting materials you could
(27:47):
say. So toxic materials in it isquite small. As you can see,
footprint we have been put inthe ETrack and has put them in
and with our system. So that'swhat we touching the seabed with
them with this. And then what wecan see is that then growth
happens on the system, thenthere will be some sound. But
(28:07):
again, it's very limited soundand earlier scientific studies
and others have not shown anynegative effect from that. But
that needs to be studied more.
David Evans (28:19):
Yeah, that was gonna be my next question about
underwater noise and its impacton on marine life as well. So be
interesting to see how thatdevelops with the full scale
array.
Michael Henricksen, WavePis (28:31):
But exactly, but it because to me,
that has to be also looked atlarger ratio, because for SQL
devices, if you those thoseanalysis have been done and no
negative impact of this, youknow that one? So when you just
see.
David Evans (28:43):
Yeah, I was just thinking to with a system like
this as it continues to maturewhen you're out there. I'm
curious with the system that youhave already had out on a
smaller scale. Was there atimeline where you needed to go
out and either remove debris orthere was a buildup of barnacles
or clams or the it was becomingan issue to the efficiency of
(29:07):
the system? Yeah.
Michael Henricksen, WavePist (29:08):
So the thing is, it depends on what
type of file filing we have inthe system. But what is the
other challenge we have withthis system we have in the
northeast, actually that we havegot a lot of muscles on our
booster boosters are placed ineach intestine shown in Quincy,
but also the tension in thewhole system. And they but they
started getting heavier. Sothen, of course, the Bucha is
(29:29):
not there. So we had to scrapeup the muscles. So that's one
thing that part of the operationmaintenance, you need to clean
for that. And then of course,what we looking at is to look at
the material that werebiofouling was not be as extreme
as with some things we don'twant to use too much, you know,
painted by off on the paint. Sowe also look into copper side
(29:51):
glass paper material, which canbe done so it'll be less
biopharma things, but But as forefficiency, we've not seen
anything that Then it but thatis also remains to be seen and
things because when we talk withpeople that have exploited
biofouling, it can change almostfrom one page to another page,
what type of bow find betterthings. The tests we did in the
(30:15):
in Gran Canaria. Last time herethese three, three months, we
got quite a lot of buyer file,but not inside the system, but
just you know, on our field sayswe have some raw fields coming
in, and they have to be clean.
So they have to be easy to takeoff and on as part of the
operation. I mean, besides thatthere was a lot of growth, but
not something that wasdisturbing. Negative for us,
David Evans (30:36):
I guess it would depend on the area that is
deployed. Exactly. That's,
Michael Henricksen, Wave (30:40):
that's what we're hoping to do what
we've been told also from fromit.
David Evans (30:44):
Yeah. Well, I've been learning so much, this has
been fantastic. And for many ofour listeners here in Canada,
how can we maybe myself being ina landlocked province? How can a
landlocked Canadian or anyonelistening to this podcast help
support we've piston all the wayin Denmark and wave energy
(31:05):
generating? Yeah, actually,there
Michael Henricksen, WavePis (31:07):
are some Canadian colleagues of
mine, that are also working withVAT and decent nation. So of
course, supporting sort of thewhole section, you know, getting
it up in what will be importantfor us and for the whole sector
is to get you know, the messageout, and then the pressure on
(31:28):
both the politicians decisionmaking this because we need that
also. So that's what we're doingthat the whole time by our
membership organizations andstuff like that. So that's one
thing. And then of course, alsoin Canada, you get to some very
nice title things on it, atleast on the on the on the end,
(31:49):
then on the West Coast, verygood wave climate, they're also
things. So supporting theseinitiatives in ocean energy as
such, but also wave energy, ofcourse. And then talking with
people and getting out on in themedia, like you do now that it
always helps. Because whenpoliticians start hearing it,
there's going to be pressureabout all these things and also
(32:11):
want to support this, then wecan get into sort of this
section moving on faster than weare moving right along.
David Evans (32:18):
Wonderful.
Wonderful. And my my finalquestion, How did you find
yourself a part of this team?
What led you to where you arecurrently as the CEO of wave
piston?
Michael Henricksen, WaveP (32:28):
Yeah, that's sort of you can say, the
usual mid 40 crisis, you can sayI want I want to do something
that really is all okay, thiscould be something that will
make a big difference in theworld. Yeah, I have a background
actually been working in the inthe financial industry with
large projects and differenttypes of things with the capital
(32:49):
markets, etc. And I was juststarting to think it's a no, I
want to do something else use mymy competences as something that
I could see make a largedifference. And I like to build
up things also like thesethings. So that was sort of the
combination. And then I knew oneof the events is have heard
about the innovation model we'llbe doing. And they are not the
(33:11):
best in getting, you know, allthe other stuff around to get
this to work. They want to focuson the technical side of things.
So okay, let me take that one.
You take the other one. And thenlet's make a big difference
together. So that was sort oflike the driving force for this.
And then yeah, we've been goingon since now, almost, yeah, over
eight years now. I've been partof this
David Evans (33:32):
incredible, incredible, thank you so much
for spending the time to speakwith me today. I'm hoping that
all the listeners will havepicked up something here and
there. And we're gonna get soexcited about wave energy. And
we're going to be looking forwave energy options in Canada.
And I'll be posting links tosupport wave piston, but also
(33:53):
Canadian wave energy as well. Sothank you so much for spending
the time to speak with me today.
Michael Henricksen, WavePis (33:57):
But thank you, too. It's been a
pleasure. And yeah, pleasefollow us, you know, both the
whole sector and also wait,paste. We have a LinkedIn page
where we do updates, you canalways see nice pictures,
videos, what is happening. Andthen we'll have to come to
Canada and install some systemsthere as well.
David Evans (34:14):
There we go.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for listeningto today's deep dive episode
with Michael Henrickson, the CEOof wave piston. And thanks so
much to Michael for taking thetime to speak with me. He's a
great speaker and is clearlyvery passionate about this type
(34:36):
of energy. And I think it holdsso much promise for the future.
And I'm so excited to see whereit goes. I'll be sure to add
some updates on where they'reactually at with their process.
Once this episode is released,check out the show notes.
There'll be updated for sure.
But hey, want to keep updatedyourself? Be sure to check them
out at wave piston.dk That's ourmain website. You can also
follow them on LinkedIn. Theypost regular updates on there as
(34:58):
well. up on their website, theyhave a lot more information and
some really cool informationalvideos that really helped break
down the process and help youvisualize the actual system
we're talking about with theseenergy collector plates. I'm the
host and producer David Evans.
And I just like to thank therest of the team, specifically
Paula poem, and Lee Burton, andthe rest of the aquatic
(35:21):
biosphere board. Thanks for allof your help. And to learn more
about the aquatic biosphereproject. And what we're doing
right here in Alberta tellingthe story of water, you can
check us out at aquaticbiosphere.ca. And we also have
launched our new media company,a b n aquatic biosphere network,
which you can find that thepublic place dot online and
(35:44):
search for the aquatic biospherenetwork channel, where we will
actually be posting all of thevideo episodes that we're going
to be creating this year. Sotune in, they will be out for
the next little while, but veryexcited to start sharing video
content as well as ourinterviews. Next week, we will
be releasing our deep diveepisode with Dr. Steve Grassi
from geothermal Canada, where welearn all about the potential we
(36:07):
have in Canada to creategeothermal energy, and actually
how we have so much potential,but we're not using it yet. And
why is that? Tune in? You won'twant to miss it. If you have any
questions or comments about theshow, we'd love to hear them.
Email us at conservation ataquatic biosphere.org. Please
don't forget to like, share andsubscribe. Leave us a review. It
(36:30):
really helps us out. Thanks andit's been a splash
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