Eni has completed the installation of the world’s first Inertial Sea Wave Energy Converter (ISWEC) device connected to the electricity grid of an island.

The wave energy device is located about 800 meters off the coast of the Italian island of Pantelleria and can reach 260 kW of peak power generation converted from wave energy.

This experimental campaign, conducted under real operating conditions, will lead to useful results for developing the second-generation device under study, Eni said.

ISWEC was developed by Eni in collaboration with the Italian technical university Politecnico di Torino and Wave for Energy (a spinoff of the university).

The technology converts wave motion into electricity, which then supplies energy to offshore infrastructure, small off-grid islands, and coastal communities.

ISWEC design can be optimized with reference to the metocean conditions of the site where it is installed by means of a genetic algorithm that leverages on the significant computing power of Eni’s Green Data Center (GDC) based in Ferrera Erbognone (in the province of Pavia).