Video: Wave

Sweden's CorPower has announced "breakthrough" results from Atlantic ocean testing of its full-scale floating generators, which cleverly time their motions to amplify smaller waves while protecting themselves against dangerous storm conditions.

In a mechanical sense, this is a pretty standard looking anchored buoy point absorber type system; waves lift a floaty air-filled chassis up and down, and a power takeoff system within harvests energy by converting that linear up and down movement into rotation for running generators.

CorPower says it's a novel phase control technology called WaveSpring that sets its huge C4 buoys apart. An internal pneumatic cylinder is pre-tensioned to pull the buoy downwards, such that in the absence of active control, the buoy simply sits still in "transparent" mode no matter how high the waves get. This acts as a safety mechanism under the worst conditions.