Wave energy developer CorPower Ocean has appointed Miguel Silva to head up its Portuguese operation.
Silva (pictured) recently held the role of plant manager at the Enercon blade factory in Viana do Castelo.
He will oversee CorPower’s activities in the country, including composite hull development, manufacturing and assembly of wave energy converters as well as activities covering installation and maintenance of wave arrays offshore.
CorPower recently revealed plans for a new €16m research and development, manufacturing and service centre in Viana do Castelo, where the company is assembling its HiWave-5 pilot wave energy farm, planned off the coast of Agucadoura.
He said: “I’m truly excited to be part of this project to firmly establish wave power as a solid and reliable renewable energy investment option.
“Our mission is to build a world-class knowledge centre in Viana for the development and mass fabrication of WECs.
“We are currently laying the foundations for future high-volume operations. This involves collecting substantial amounts of data to ‘prove’ our technology, with an overall aim of successfully completing the demonstration phase with HiWave-5 with a competitive and certified product.
“Following this, we plan to expand our fabrication and service capacity to be prepared for widescale supply of our new generation WECs.”
CorPower’s head of people, Hanna Nordqvist, said: “We are thrilled to have Miguel on the team. He brings extensive experience both on a technical and managerial level.
“His knowledge of emerging technologies includes more than a decade dedicated to the wind energy sector. In this field he was responsible for starting and optimising manufacturing and assembly operations for both onshore and offshore wind turbines.
“Miguel brings strong international experience from around the world including Germany, Portugal and India.
“I am confident he will play a key role in building our organisation to ensure successful scale-up to of manufacturing capacity for commercial scale machines.”