We've Won!

AWS OCEAN SCOOPS BOTH INDIVIDUAL AND COMPANY PIONEER PRIZES

Judges at Energy Ocean, the leading international ocean renewables conference held in Hawaii, announced today (23rd August 2007) that AWS Ocean Energy, the company behind the Archimedes wave energy device, has won two of its prestigious Pioneer Awards.

For its work in developing the Archimedes Wave Swing, Alness-based AWS Ocean Energy won a Company Pioneer Award, for businesses that have demonstrated a commercially viable and scalable ocean energy power producing device. In addition, the company’s non-executive director, Fred Gardner, the originator of the Archimedes Wave Swing, won a Technology Pioneer Award, which recognises exceptional individual inventors and designers of viable ocean energy devices. Mr Gardner is a professional engineer with over 25 years experience in production engineering, maintenance and the development of new engineering concepts through R & D.

Simon Grey, chief executive, AWS Ocean Energy commented, “We are very proud to accept these awards, they come at a very exciting time for us where we are currently building a team of engineers characterised by their hunger for innovation and delivering results. These awards will help attract really high quality people to AWS to help us develop this exciting technology”.

Earlier this week, the company’s Operations Director, Graham Bibby, travelled out to Hawaii to present a paper on the Archimedes device to hundreds of other international technologists, investors and policymakers at the EnergyOcean conference.

A central feature of the four-day conference is the Pioneer Awards, which recognise individuals and organisations in five separate categories who have made a significant contribution to the promotion, implementation and development of ocean energy around the world.

These prestigious awards follows news earlier this summer that a demonstration pre-commercial prototype of the Archimedes Wave Swing, with a capacity of 250kW, will be deployed at Orkney’s European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in 2009.

The company plans to construct its first mini wave farm of 500kW Archimedes units by the third quarter of 2010, expanding within 12 months to 20 units, with projections to have installed over 100 units by 2013.