News

September 30, 2008

The Prospects For Wave Power Seem To Be Ebbing Away, At Least As Far As Investors And Brokers Are Concerned

By Ivor Watt

Scottish Power this week unveiled plans for the world’s largest tidal wave energy farm to be built in the seas between Scotland and Northern Ireland, and using underwater turbines that are remarkably similar in appearance to wind turbines. That announcement came just days after Scottish firm Pelamis Wave Power announced the switch-on of its first wave farm off Portugal. A third piece of positive news came recently when Aim-traded Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) announced it had placed its 40kw PowerBuoy device offshore Spain in the first phase of a planned wave farm to be operated in conjunction with Iberdrola.

But while this may suggest a growing momentum for wave and tidal power some investors must be losing patience with the likes of OPT and the time it is taking to get viable commercial devices into action. In fact, in OPT’s case even its own broker appears to have run out of patience.

Earlier this month Collins Stewart analyst Raymond Greaves issued a withering broker note on OPT entitled ‘Glacial Progress’, following the company’s first quarter results. The note said that ‘if the rest of...