Part one
The large float
The part that meets the sea. Buoyancy captures the energy, not a moving blade — which is why the float is a welded hull rather than a machine.
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.
For illustration only — the actual design is shared in closer dialogues.
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!
How it 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.
There is no gearbox and no generator under the water. A large float rides the passing wave, buoyancy turns that motion into water at pressure, and the pressure drives a turbine type that hydropower stations have run continuously since the 1880s.
The wave power take-off in section. On Medi Wave 850H the cylinder pushes upward against the platform rather than down to the seabed, which keeps the assembly above water and removes the subsea components.
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The float meets the wave
Its rectangular shape follows the shape of the wave itself, presenting the largest possible surface to the passing swell.
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The valve closes at the low point
At the bottom of the cycle the valve shuts, holding the float in a fixed position relative to the sea floor.
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The wave rises around it
Up to three metres of the float is locked below the surface as the water climbs past it.
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Air is trapped below the surface
Six hundred cubic metres of it. That displaced volume is what the lifting force is made of.
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The valve opens and the turbine runs
At the right pressure the valve releases. Six hundred tonnes of lifting force push high-pressure water onto a Pelton turbine, which turns the generator.
Float travel, trapped air volume and lifting force are design figures for the full-scale unit, derived from NoviOcean’s hydrodynamic model. modeled
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 the hydraulic unit are photographs of NoviOcean test hardware. The Pelton runner shown is representative of the turbine class rather than a NoviOcean part.
Survivability
Built for the sea on its worst day.
Wave machines are rarely lost to the force they harvest. They are lost to drag. A low draft and a free-floating design leave the storm very little structure to push sideways, while the lifting force the system works with stays large.
- Low draft
- Free-floating design
- Initiated survival mode
20 : 1
lifting force against surge force. In 25-metre rogue waves the surge peaks at 33 tonnes per side, against 600 tonnes of lift. modeled
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: improved production stability and reduced simultaneous low-output periods.
Cheap generation alone is insufficient — the full energy system is what matters.
A generator is only as useful as the system needed to make its output dependable. Once storage, backup and the oversizing required to serve a firm load are counted, the ranking changes.
| 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.
More energy per tonne of structure.
Offshore cost tracks steel and marine operations far more closely than it tracks the energy resource. Specific energy — megawatt-hours produced per tonne of structure over the life of the unit — is therefore one of the more honest ways to compare technology classes.
Technology-class comparison from NoviOcean’s own modelling. These are classes of device, not named products or companies.
Life-cycle assessment puts the platform at 9 kg CO2e per MWh — about 4% of the EU grid average. externally validated
A deep study on these aspects is available on request.
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 the large turbines, enabled by the co-located vertical-axis machines beneath them.
Vertical-axis yield
+15–30%Additional energy from the same sea area — vertical-axis turbines work efficiently in wake zones and lower wind layers.
Power density
Up to 3×Higher power density per square kilometre, through tighter turbine spacing and a layered array design.
Adding NoviOcean’s wave and solar output on the same structures takes a co-located array to approximately 10 MW per square kilometre. externally validated
Sources: Xie et al. (2017) · Hansen et al. (2020) · Dabiri (2011) · Shao et al. (2023) · Chen & Agarwal (2012). Reported ranges are from these published studies; 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. The methods are established; NoviOcean’s final integrated structure still requires validation.
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. Hydropower has used hydraulic conversion successfully for more than 200 years — the only innovation is where the pressure comes from: not a dam, but the controlled movement of offshore floats.
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.