Fish cage power plant creator plugs into market
A company that uses fish cage collars to create floating solar energy plants is planning to list on Norway’s Merkur Market to raise money for expansion.
Ocean Sun has previously conducted tests of the concept at a salmon farm run by Scottish Sea Farms co-owner Lerøy on Osterøy outside Bergen.
The company’s aim was to provide supplementary clean power for fish farms that don’t have access to shore power and are reliant on greenhouse gas generating diesel generators. Ocean Sun uses a cage collar with a plastic sheet stretched across which supports the solar panels.
Demonstration plants
Børge Bjørneklett, founder of Ocean Sun, told Fish Farming Expert’s Norwegian sister site, Kyst.no, that the company is now carrying out a share issue to strengthen the organisation both regionally and in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and North Africa and north and south America.
He said Ocean Sun had a lot of confidence in its technology, based on the fact that it had had several demonstration plants of different sizes that have been in operation over time. Some of these have been in operation for several years with good results.
“The aquaculture industry has limited power requirements and depends on many small plants with a maximum output of about 100KWp. These are usually ‘off-grid’ and need relatively expensive battery solutions in combination with diesel generators,” said Bjørneklett.
“In order to reduce costs, we will mainly work with larger ‘utility’ types of power plants in the Megawatt class. Liquid solar energy on hydropower reservoirs is a particularly interesting market. Larger facilities along the coast in sunny areas are also future investment areas.”
Growing rapidly
The Ocean Sun boss said there was currently a very good demand for the company’s technology, and said the company was growing rapidly.
“The way forward now will be the expansion and construction of more power plants. Larger power plants will increase Ocean Sun’s revenues and create a sound basis for further expansion and expansion of our solution for liquid solar energy.”
Bjørneklett said the company is currently testing its systems in Western Norway, in Singapore, the Philippines and soon Albania. It is also in talks about several projects in other regions.
