Alstom and SSE have joined forces to build the world’s largest wave energy site. The partners will develop the Costa Head Wave Project, a site located north of mainland Orkney which could generate 200MW of power.

The joint venture hopes to install 2.5MW AWS-III wave energy converters at the site with an initial phase of around 10MW worth, before moving on to install the full site capacity.

The technology from AWS Ocean Energy converts the energy from waves into pneumatic power through the compression of air. Turbine-generator sets then convert the pneumatic power to electricity.