Ocean Renewable Power Co., a Portland-based company focused on generating renewable energy from the world’s oceans and rivers, is in the process of raising $10 million to help it fund its next stage of growth.
The company is already famous for becoming the first in the world to generate electricity from the ocean’s tides (by installing its proprietary underwater turbine in Cobscook Bay in 2012) and a river’s current (Alaska in 2014) and deliver it effectively to a power grid.
CEO Chris Sauer tells Maine Startups Insider that the financing will allow the company to achieve two major milestones next year: the installation of its “optimized” RivGen Power System in Igiugig, Alaska, in July 2019, and the installation of a smaller (100kW) version of its “optimized” commercial design of its TidGen Power System in the St. Lawrence River at Quai des Cageux (near Québec City) in October 2019.
But the company has not abandoned Maine and its tides.
“In 2021, we’ll be putting a much larger, but similar device (likely 250kW), initially in Cobscook Bay, then relocated to Western Passage,” Sauer wrote in an email. “We still intend to build out the 5MW Maine Tidal Energy Project a couple years after that.”
The $10 million the company is now looking to raise by the end of the year represents the company’s fourth big financing round, or what can be referred to as a Series D.
In the spring of 2017, Maine Startups Insider reported that ORPC was raising a Series B round of $2.5 million that would allow it to restructure the company, including the conversion of all debt to equity and switching from a LLC to a C Corp. Sauer reports that the company ended up raising $2.62 million and has closed on all but $850,000, which is committed but not yet funded.
In addition, the company recently (on July 20) filed a Form D with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission revealing that it was raising a Series C round of $3 million. While the paperwork says the company had raised $100,000 of the $3 million, Sauer reports that the company has, in fact, already closed on $2.8 million, with just $200,000 still not committed.
ORPC, which Sauer recently described as a “14-year-old startup” to a Forbes contributor, first raised a substantial amount of funds in 2009, when investors (led by a family office called Spindrift Equities, though it was known as Caithness Energy at the time of the investment) poured $13.2 million into the company.
Sauer reports that another family office, which he declined to name, has recently made major investments, including almost the entirety of its Series C ($2.7 million in two tranches).
“Although family offices have been the focus in recent years, new interest is coming from some bigger players, including impact funds and private equity,” Sauer said.
Counting debt and state and federal grants, ORPC has raised more than $90 million, Sauer said.
