Nice to see some more detail around the strategy as well. One thing that caught my eye was the 100 EOIs for Protean WEC from Hanimaadhoo Island in the Maldives. Not a bad strike rate for a population of ~2,500. This opportunity in the Maldives could turn out to be a good revenue stream for POW following the successful completion of the testing at Bunbury.
Here is an interview by Bruce Lane at the 121 Tech Investment Conference in Hong Kong.
Sum up your company for us in a sentence or two.
The global renewable energy market is growing rapidly and Protean’s unique wave energy conversion technology holds the potential to claim a significant share of this market. Through its design the technology is targeting overcoming the barriers that have prevented the adoption of wave energy to-date. The Wave Energy Convertor (WEC) is designed to be simple to install with a small footprint requiring no subsea drilling, it is simple to retrieve or relocate & targets cost effective power & clean water supply from ocean waves.
Tell us a little about you and your team’s background.
We have assembled an experienced team with a combination of technical & commercial expertise to support our immediate priorities. Our team has a background spanning the energy, technology and financial sectors. Our Chairman, Mr Brendan Hammond was the previous Chairman of Horizon Power, the largest power supply and distribution company in regional Western Australia. Sean Moore, our Chief Technology Officer and inventor of the WEC is a highly credentialed and awarded scientist and Mr William Toman, the President of our US subsidiary led the US’s first open ocean, grid connected wave energy testing and demonstration facility. In addition Scott Davis, our GM for business development is an engineer with a renewable energy qualification and deep experience of the challenges and opportunities involving the supply of renewable energy within a distributed and isolated micro grid environment. I myself have spent over two decades working with early stage projects in young technology companies, blue-chip companies and ASX listed vehicles.
What is the focus of your management team in 2016/17? What are the key milestones you are looking to reach over the next year that you think will add value to the business?
Our key focus over the coming months is to complete our demonstration wave farm deployment at the Port of Bunbury in Western Australia and to use the data collected from that trial to help refine the inputs to a pre-feasibility study for our first commercial pilot wave farm. We also plan to demonstrate the technology off the coast of California during 2016. This is to be facilitated through our partnership with California Polytechnic University (Cal Poly), a leading US university, part of the CalWave project (a project to accelerate the development of wave-energy technologies in the US and to construct a world-class National Wave Energy Testing Facility). This project has helped to place Protean at the forefront of wave energy technology in the US and our partnerships here will help us to maximise the potential penetration of Protean in the region.
Why have you attended the 121 Tech Investment conference? Who do you hope to meet?
We hope to meet investors and strategic partners with a strong appetite for renewable energy and who are interested in helping unlock the next wave of renewable energy and distributed desalination technologies.
Investors like to see that management have “skin in the game”. Tell us briefly about your management team’s investment in the business.
Management & the board have made substantial investments in the company with Myself, Sean Moore and Bevan Tarratt all participating in the latest round of capital raising.
In a sentence, what do you think makes your company such a compelling investment?
Lowering the cost of harnessing the ocean’s power is one of the most compelling challenges of our century. Wave energy is abundant, accessible, efficient, clean, predictable, and has a low impact on the environment. Protean’s unique WEC aims to reduce the barriers to wave energy adoption and through our partnerships, expertise and international networks the Company is positioned to accelerate the commercialisation of its technology and become a leading global supplier of wave energy systems.
POW Price at posting:
1.7¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)
