Part one
The wave floats
Buoyancy captures wave energy through independent floats, transferring their movement to the hydraulic system.
Technology
One platform. Three energy sources.
Medi Wave 850H is NoviOcean’s current product: wave, wind and solar on a single floating structure, built largely from technologies that already work at sea.
The current product
Medi Wave 850H.
Medi Wave 850H is NoviOcean’s current product, its pilot platform and its commercialization pathway. One floating structure carries a wave power take-off, vertical-axis wind turbines and a solar deck, and delivers their combined output through one mooring and one export cable.
300 kW
Wave — NoviOcean power take-off
350 kW
Wind — Wind Harvest vertical-axis turbines
200 kW
Solar — Midsummer CIGS deck
850 kW
Total rated capacity management estimate
The next major phase is the full-scale Medi Wave pilot with a utility partner, 2027–2028, TRL 7–8. projected
The future of Offshore Energy will NOT be single-source systems, it will be hybrid!
For illustration only — the actual design is shared in closer dialogues.
How wave energy conversion works
An inverted hydro power plant.
Hydropower has run water under pressure through turbines for more than two hundred years. Those hydraulics are among the most reliable machines in energy, and NoviOcean uses them as they are.
The only innovation is where the pressure comes from. Instead of a dam and a head of water, large floats ride the passing waves and lift against the sea. The rest of the chain is equipment the industry has trusted for generations.
The mechanism
Buoyancy does the lifting.
No gearbox or generator underwater. Medi Wave uses independent side floats to convert wave motion into hydraulic pressure, driving a turbine based on proven hydropower technology.
Earlier Alta Wave single-float concept, illustrating the hydraulic operating principle. Medi Wave applies the same principle with multiple independent side floats.
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The floats meet the waves
Independent side floats respond to passing waves.
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Buoyancy drives the hydraulics
Their movement drives hydraulic cylinders.
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The turbine generates electricity
Pressurised water powers a Pelton turbine and generator.
The shared hydraulic principle has been tested in earlier NoviOcean prototypes. This is distinct from certification of the complete Medi Wave system.
The moving parts
Three components, all of them ordinary.
A hydropower plant taken to sea and inverted. The slow travel of a wave becomes high generator speed through parts that shipyards, hydraulics suppliers and hydropower stations already build in series.
Part two
The hydraulic cylinder
Standard hydraulics, the same component class used across heavy industry, converting the float’s slow travel into water at working pressure.
Part three
The Pelton turbine
A turbine design in continuous hydropower service for well over a century. Nothing about it had to be invented for the sea.
The float and hydraulic unit show NoviOcean’s earlier Alta Wave test hardware. Medi Wave applies the same hydraulic principles using multiple independent floats. The Pelton runner is representative of the turbine class rather than a NoviOcean part.
Survivability
Built for the sea on its worst day.
Medi Wave is designed for low to moderate offshore conditions in normal operation and engineered for survivability in extreme conditions. It builds on principles investigated and tested through NoviOcean’s earlier prototypes.
Key advantages
Why hybrid changes the arithmetic.
A single source has to be sized for its own worst hours. Three off-phased sources on one structure do not. The four figures below are the arguments that matter most to a system buyer: stability, total system cost, energy per tonne of steel, and energy per square kilometre of sea.
Wave and wind are off-phased.
Measured production profiles from Galway Bay, Ireland, over the first fifteen days of April. Wind alone rarely holds above a tenth of its rated capacity. Waves hold a third. Run together, the floor rises to between forty and fifty per cent — the same physical cycle, half a day apart.
Galway Bay, Ireland, 1–15 April. Source: Seabased. Curves are redrawn for the web from the published production profiles; the baseload levels — 10%, 30% and 40–50% — are the reported values.
- Solar heating drives atmospheric wind systems.
- Wind transfers energy into ocean waves over time and distance.
- Due to the high mass of water, waves continue long after winds subside.
- As waves gradually decline, wind systems rebuild, repeating the cycle.
Result: More stable power production, reducing reliance on energy storage and fossil-fuel backup while improving opportunities to capture higher electricity prices.
Cheap generation alone is insufficient — the full energy system is what matters.
Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) is a widely used measure of generation cost, but it does not capture the full cost of delivering dependable electricity. Levelized Full System Cost of Energy (LFSCOE) also considers storage, backup and additional generation capacity needed to meet demand reliably.
| System | Generation CAPEX / MW | Standalone LCOE | Storage & backup need | Installed capacity for a reliable 10 MW load | Total system CAPEX | Reliable 24/7 economics |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solar only | Low | Very low | Very high | Very high | Very high | Weak |
| Wind only | Moderate | Low | High | High | High | Moderate |
| Wind + solar | Low–moderate | Low | Moderate | Moderate–high | Moderate–high | Moderate |
| NoviOcean hybrid | Moderate | Competitive | Low–moderate | Moderate | Moderate | Strong |
Qualitative system comparison from NoviOcean’s own system modelling. Ratings are relative, not absolute, and depend on site, load profile and local energy prices.
NoviOcean’s complementary wave, wind and solar production is designed to reduce these additional system costs, improving the economics of reliable 24/7 electricity supply.
Energy density changes the full-system economics.
Combining wave, wind and solar on one offshore platform increases energy production from shared infrastructure. Conventional standalone systems require separate structures, moorings, cables, installation and maintenance operations, increasing the infrastructure required to deliver the same energy output.
The result: lower structural and installation requirements, fewer duplicated offshore operations and more energy from shared infrastructure — reducing the full-system cost of electricity.
Co-location raises the output of an existing wind farm.
Vertical-axis turbines sit below the rotor layer of a conventional offshore wind farm. Published research finds that they speed up wake recovery for the large machines above them while harvesting the lower wind layer themselves — two effects that raise the energy yield of the same lease area.
Horizontal-axis output
+10–20%Faster wake recovery for large horizontal-axis turbines, enabled by co-located vertical-axis turbines.
Vertical-axis turbine performance
+15–30%Increased output from individual vertical-axis turbines benefiting from turbulent flow within horizontal-axis wind farms, compared with standalone operation.
Power density
Up to 3×Higher power density per square kilometre through co-location, tighter turbine spacing and vertically layered turbine arrays.
NoviOcean’s hybrid platforms are designed to add approximately 15 MW of installed wave, wind and solar capacity per square kilometre of offshore wind-farm area, with a projected capacity factor comparable to offshore wind. NoviOcean design target
Sources: Xie et al. (2017) · Hansen et al. (2020) · Dabiri (2011) · Shao et al. (2023) · Chen & Agarwal (2012). Published co-location findings are indicative and study- and site-dependent, not guaranteed performance gains. The value for a specific site depends on layout, wind climate and turbine selection.
Technology ecosystem
A new integration of established technologies and NoviOcean’s proprietary wave system.
NoviOcean is a systems integrator. Solar, wind and the marine structure come from established suppliers and established methods; the wave power take-off is NoviOcean’s own. Roughly 65% of rated capacity comes from established specialist technologies. management estimate
Solar — CIGS
Midsummer
Commercially established technology. Lightweight flexible CIGS panels, low shading sensitivity, good low-light performance and a marine-suitable design, laid onto a deck the platform needs anyway.
approximately TRL 9Wind — vertical-axis
Wind Harvest
Substantial full-scale development. Compact vertical-axis turbines that benefit from close placement and run quietly, mounted on the platform rather than on a tower of their own.
~TRL 7 completed → TRL 8 / certificationFloating steel structure
Shipyard construction
Conventional welded-steel shipyard engineering and established marine construction methods, enabling fabrication of the structure at suitable local shipyards.
established methodsWave system
NoviOcean
Presently TRL 6 and progressing toward TRL 7. Based primarily on established hydropower and industrial components and principles used for more than a century.
TRL 6 → 7Rated capacity is the installed nameplate; annual production is modelled and site-dependent. Marine integration and final configuration still require engineering and validation.
Marine integration and final configuration still require engineering and validation.
Turbine number, turbine rating and photovoltaic area remain project-dependent — typically five to seven modular 50–75 kW vertical-axis turbines and approximately 1,000–1,300 m² of solar deck. management estimate
Technology-readiness levels on this page are screening self-assessments made by NoviOcean and its partners. They are not independent certifications.
The three layers
Three sources.
One platform.
Waves keep rolling after the wind fades. The sun fills the calm days. Put all three on one floating structure and the output steadies — while the costly parts get shared.
The wave system
Floats ride the swell and drive hydraulic cylinders, producing pressurised water that powers a Pelton turbine and generator. Proven hydropower principles minimise metal-to-metal wear. The power takeoff has a 50-year design-life basis; the main steel structure also targets 50 years.
NoviOcean · TRL 6 → 7The wind system
Vertical-axis turbines from Wind Harvest sit low on the deck. They capture slightly less energy than tall horizontal turbines, but create dramatically smaller overturning moments — less steel, a lighter platform, simpler installation. Wind Harvest has completed substantial full-scale development and is progressing toward certification.
~TRL 7 completed → TRL 8The solar deck
Flexible CIGS panels from Midsummer cover the deck surface that already has to exist. Lightweight, saltwater-ready, and adding generation on space the structure provides for free.
Midsummer · approximately TRL 9
Future development
Alta Wave 1000H.
Alta Wave is a future specialized solution for very high-energy wave regions. NoviOcean’s current product, pilot and commercialization pathway is Medi Wave 850H.
Alta Wave shares the same validated principles: buoyancy-driven hydraulics, a Pelton turbine, vertical-axis wind and a solar deck on one floating structure. Its development history — tank testing, offshore operation and third-party simulation — is part of the evidence base behind the platform as a whole. It is not a parallel near-term programme and does not draw on current commercialization resources.
See the evidence, or talk it through.
The development journey, offshore testing, the NO3 demonstrator and the simulation work sit on the Validation page. If it is easier to ask directly, a short introductory meeting is the fastest route.