A contract, worth in the region of $4.4M (3 million euros), has been signed by Finnish company AW-Energy and the European Union to put in place a demonstration version of the company's wave energy technology, WaveRoller. The goal of the project is to manufacture and deploy the first grid-connected WaveRoller unit in  Portuguese waters near the town of Peniche. The nominal capacity of the WaveRoller unit is 300 kW and the project includes a one-year testing period.

The consortium lead by AW-Energy includes companies from Finland, Portugal, Germany and Belgium, including Bosch-Rexroth and ABB, together with renewable energy operator Eneolica and wave energy specialist Wave Energy Center.

"The experience of our dream team consortium is a significant asset to the project, and we are thrilled about this real pan-European co-operation. AW-Energy has been working hard for the last three years with two sea installed prototypes, tank testing and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations. Now we have the site, grid connection permission, installation license and the technology ready for the demonstration phase," says John Liljelund, CEO at AW-Energy.

The contract between AW-Energy and the EU is, says the company, the first one under the "CALL FP7 - Demonstration of the innovative full size systems."