Aquamarine Power, the wave energy developer, announced that it had closed the first round of its fundraising on Monday (21st September) after successfully raising £10 million from investors based in the UK and Ireland. According to the company the proceeds of the fundraising will be used to fund the testing programme and for general working capital purposes.

Commenting on the announcement Martin McAdam, Chief Executive Officer of Aquamarine Power said; “Raising substantial funds in these exceptionally difficult market conditions is an incredible achievement for Aquamarine.

“It proves that there is considerable investor appetite for renewable energy companies.  Aquamarine has a great team in place with the technological and commercial know-how to take Oyster all the way through to the finishing line."

Aquamarine has a total funding requirement of approximately £50 million to take Oyster through to commercialisation.  This will be raised in stages, with a second fundraising round due to commence shortly.  Aquamarine expects to have a fully commissioned commercially available wave farm in place by 2014.

McAdam stressed the suppot the company drew from its existing shareholders. “We have a strong shareholder base and our existing investors which include Scottish and Southern Energy and Sigma Capital plc have been extremely supportive of our strategy and the fundraising.”

The company already has an agreement in place with Airtricity, the renewable energy division of Scottish and Southern Energy to develop up to 1,000MW of marine energy sites by 2020 using Oyster technology.

The successful first round of fundraising follows close on the heels of last month's announcement by the company that a full scale demonstrator of its Oyster wave energy converter has now been successfully deployed at its testing berth at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney, on schedule and within forecast costs.  Work is currently ongoing to connect Oyster to sub-sea pipelines which will deliver high pressure fresh water to an onshore turbine.  It is scheduled to begin generating power to enable full scale offshore testing to begin later this year.  Testing is expected to take up to two years.