Norwegian rainbow trout farmers, Svanøy Havbruk, will be the first aquaculture facility in the world to use wave power to replace diesel at the Sandkvia site on the south side of Svanøy. The technology is supplied by Havkraft AS and the plant is expected to be in operation in the second half of 2023. The company will install a full-scale HAVKRAFT N-CLASS wave power plant, an OWC nearshore solution for locations with waves below 15 kW/m and periods below 10.
“There are many people with a need for power that cannot be solved by other technologies. We have something unique: we can produce the amount of power a breeding facility needs, but we can also scale up. There is great flexibility in the technology,” Geir Arne Solheim, manager at Havkraft, said.
This will be a commercial test facility, where Svanøy Havbruk will buy the power that is produced, at the same time as Havkraft works to optimize, document and develop the technology for the customers who are waiting in the project run.
R&D manager at Svanøy Havbruk, Solveig Willis, said that “it has been our strategy for many years to produce good, clean food with the least possible impact on the environment.”
Since 2020, the company has electrified the four locations that are in use today, which corresponds to an annual CO2 cut of 1,000 tonnes. How much power can be extracted from the wave power plant depends on the weather conditions in the place. And there are plenty of waves and weather around Sandkvia, according to Willis.
