Ocean Renewable Power Co., developer of innovative renewable power systems that harness the energy of free-flowing rivers and tidal currents, announced this week it has raised $25 million in growth capital.
The company, known as ORPC, has secured a $20 million investment commitment, along with an additional $5 million in a second closing that will take place this fall, from a consortium led by private equity firm Canadian Shield Capital. The company has raised a total of $42.6 million since being founded in 2004, according to Crunchbase.
Canadian Shield Capital is the investment arm of Hatch, a global engineering, project management, and professional services firm that has a specific focus on waterpower and microgrids. Existing investors of ORPC also participated in this round of funding.
The Portland-based company—already famous for becoming the first in the world to deliver electricity to a power grid that was generated from ocean tides and river currents—will use the fresh capital to finance ORPC’s growth, including the installation of multiple devices in its targeted markets as well as boosting the company’s sales and marketing capability, supply chain and engineering expertise, and front office services. With the Hatch’s backing, this investment strengthens ORPC’s ability to penetrate international markets and meet global demand for renewable power options, beginning with remote locations but eventually expanding its customer verticals.
“We see the potential in ORPC’s robust technology and see a path toward much more wide-scale adoption as part of community power solutions, initially in off-grid applications, but ultimately with grid-scale fleets of devices which also, due to steady power supply, will be useful to remote mines and industrial facilities,” Robert Francki, Hatch’s global managing director of energy and dynamic earth solutions.
In 2012, the company became the first in the world to generate electricity from the ocean’s tides and deliver it effectively to a power grid when it installed its proprietary underwater turbine in Maine’s Cobscook Bay. It did the same for river currents in 2014. Those were both pilot projects, but the company launched its first commercial product, the RivGen Power System, in the summer of 2019 in the remote village of Igiugig, Alaska, where the system was installed and is now operating in the nearby Kvichak River.
“With over two years of operating history in the harsh river environment in Igiugig, Alaska, ORPC’s RivGen Power System has generated growing interest by remote communities globally to replace their diesel generation systems with our highly predictable, base-load renewable energy system,” said Stuart Davies, who took over as ORPC’s CEO last year. “This new investment in ORPC, and the expertise that Canada Shield and Hatch bring, dramatically expand ORPC’s capability to respond to our target markets, which include communities eager to develop more localized and resilient renewable energy sources.”
More than 2 billion people worldwide have limited or no access to electricity, and 700 million of them rely on diesel fuel to operate their local grids, according to the company. ORPC’s RivGen system installed in Igiugig, Alaska, is the longest operating hydrokinetic device in all of the Americas. The company says the installation of a second device together with an energy storage system and smart microgrid controls will enable the community to reduce its diesel use by up to 90%.
ORPC says it has a growing pipeline of potential projects that span North and South America, Europe and Africa, where the high cost of diesel contributes to economic stagnation and income inequality for these communities.
“We have been extremely impressed by the depth of the ORPC leadership team, who have put together a thoughtful, staged plan to bring their products to market and to build broader adoption of this efficient, yet virtually untapped, CO2-free power source, beginning with a series of remote community, off-grid diesel displacements,” Andrew Dunn, Canadian Shield Capital’s managing partner, said in a statement.
