As government and commercial entities alike seek out increased autonomy in their ocean operations, Ocean Power Technologies Inc (NYSE-A:OPTT) (OPT) is seeing significant interest in its maritime solutions and services.
This week the company announced that it has received more than $1.25 million in orders for its fully integrated Wave Adaptive Modular Vessel (WAM-V) Unmanned Surface Vehicles from clients in Latin America in addition to securing funding from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, for the deployment of one of its PowerBuoy’s integrated with AT&T’s 5G technology in Monterey Bay.
OPT’s WAM-V vessels are ultra-light and modular making them ideal for a range of maritime defense and security applications.
Its PowerBuoy, meanwhile, converts ocean energy to act as an uninterruptable power supply, making it suitable for applications requiring continuous power. The moored buoy can operate in depths between 20 meters and 3 kilometers.
In conversation with Proactive, OPT CEO Philipp Stratmann talked through this week's milestones and shared his insights into how the company's autonomous systems are poised to reduce costs and the carbon footprint of its customers carrying out maritime activities.
Proactive: It’s exciting news about your contracts totalling more than $1.25 million. That’s pretty sizeable.
PS: We’re very excited. They are actually a couple of contracts that add up to more than $1.25 million in total providing our autonomous vehicles with sonar and survey systems to help our customers with ocean data collection at a lower cost point and reduced carbon footprint than they would have been able to achieve traditionally.
Let’s talk specifically about the integration aspect of your products and how it can reduce costs and carbon footprint.
As we’ve seen with lots of applications, the future of ocean technology and ocean data will inevitably be autonomous. Utilizing vehicles and buoys jointly to provide services to our customers can help them lower their carbon footprint and reduce the number of people in harm’s way in the ocean, reducing their operating expenses (opex). It also helps them to reduce capital expenditures (capex) because these systems are much more cost-efficient than large boats. That is the way integration is playing out.
We also announced the deployment of a buoy with AT&T’s 5G system in Monterey Bay for the Naval Postgraduate School and with this, you see how all the pieces of the puzzle. You end up with an integrated solution that lowers cost points and carbon footprints for customers.
The key is that your vehicles can be deployed anywhere in the world. The ability to have worldwide penetration is massive for a company like yours, right?
Absolutely. Both the vehicles and buoys can be readily deployed anywhere around the world. If you’re looking at our vehicles, three can fit on the back of a trailer that you can tow behind most standard pickup trucks or large SUVs. The buoys fit inside a 40-foot container unit. We’ve shipped them globally before and we continue to ship them globally.
We’re very excited to be able to respond where needed. Be that in the Middle East, the West Coast of the United States, out in Latin America, or other parts of the world where there is a need for ocean monitoring for ocean protection reasons related to fisheries, national security reasons like border controls or ensuring fishing lanes are clear.
We’ve seen an increase in troubles on the water recently. Being able to deploy something unmanned is a pretty bold offering to have available.
As I mentioned earlier, there’s an increasing push towards autonomy in general. What we’re seeing is that you can’t counteract certain hostile activities by doing what you’ve done before. The best way to counteract threats is with systems that are permanent and resident, like our buoys.
We’re going to be showing with the Naval Postgraduate School and AT&T that you can put out 5G-at-sea type networks that enable autonomous vehicles like ours to communicate with each other at a cost-efficient point to keep shipping lanes clear and protect borders.
Quotes have been edited for style and clarity