01 A research thesis · est. 2026 Bristol Channel · Pacific Northwest · Iberian Atlantic

The largest underused power source on Earth is also the coldest, quietest place to put a data center.

SeaPower is building the engineering, siting and economic case for coastal data centers powered, cooled and stabilized by the open ocean — starting with wave energy.

Resource ceiling
45,000–130,000
TWh / year (IRENA)
Installed today
494 MW
end of 2024 (IRENA)
02 The resource

The ocean carries roughly two hundred times more energy than the world consumes — and we have built almost nothing to catch it.

130,000TWh/yr ↳ vs. 30,000 TWh/yr global electricity demand

Wave energy density is concentrated near the surface and decays rapidly with depth. A 1-km stretch of west-facing North Atlantic coastline can carry 40–70 kW per metre of wavefront — comparable to a small wind farm, available on schedules wind cannot match.

The bottleneck has never been resource. It is survivability, mooring, power-takeoff reliability, and the cost of being at sea.

FIG.01 Cumulative ocean-energy deployment vs. theoretical resource
Theoretical resource
130,000 TWh
Practical resource (IEA-OES)
≈ 45,000 TWh
Offshore wind potential
≈ 8,000 TWh
All ocean energy installed (2024)
494 MW
— of which wave power
≈ 27 MW
03 The wave-energy paradox

A wave converter has to be sensitive enough to absorb a 1-metre swell and strong enough to survive a 15-metre storm — three orders of magnitude in between.

FIG.02 Energy density vs. structural envelope

Three orders of magnitude.

The cost of a wave-energy converter is set not by the average sea state, but by the worst sea state it must survive. Modern designs use active detuning, submergence, feathering and predictive control — tuning the power-takeoff to each incoming wave forecast.

Source: DOE Marine Energy Cost Reduction Pathways, 2025.

Figure 02 — energy density vs. structural envelope Power capture curve rises with sea state; the design point and the survival envelope are separated by approximately one thousand times in energy density. 10⁶ J/m 10⁵ J/m 10⁴ J/m 10³ J/m 10² calm design sea state storm survival DESIGN POINT power optimised SURVIVAL ENVELOPE structure must hold ≈ 1,000×
04 Five mechanisms

Five families of wave-energy converter, each suited to a different sea state and shoreline.

01  /  05
Point absorber
A buoyant body heaves with the wave against a fixed reference — a seabed anchor, a deep submerged plate, or a long-period spar. The relative motion drives a hydraulic or linear-electric power-takeoff.
SiteOffshore, mid-depth
Maturity (TRL)7–8
Rated unit100 kW – 1 MW
Best forModular arrays
heave A — POINT ABSORBER surface buoy · seabed reference depth 30–80 m
air ↑ air ↓ B — OSCILLATING WATER COLUMN shore-integrated · breakwater Wells turbine · bidirectional flow
C — ATTENUATOR long-axis floating snake · offshore ≥ 100 m length
surge D — OSCILLATING SURGE CONVERTER nearshore · 10–15 m depth hydraulic line to onshore plant
head E — OVERTOPPING DEVICE civil structure · low-head turbines site-specific civil works
05 The data center concept

From wavefront to GPU rack, in seven hops.

A SeaPower facility is not an offshore platform — it is a coastal data center with the wave farm as primary generation, the deep ocean as heat sink, and the grid as backup. We co-locate compute with energy to skip the most expensive part of the marine-energy stack: the export cable and the substation.
SeaPower architecture — sea-to-rack schematic Seven-hop diagram from offshore wave array through subsea hub, cold-water intake, substation with battery storage, data hall, seawater cooling loop, and grid tie. 1 — WAVE ARRAY 24 × 1 MW point absorbers 33 kV subsea export 2 — HUB 3 — COLD-WATER INTAKE SHORELINE SUBSTATION + BESS 4 5 — DATA HALL ≈ 60 MW IT load · 18,000 GPUs 6 — seawater liquid-cooling loop · ΔT 8–12°C 7 — GRID TIE (firming + spill) SCHEMATIC · NOT TO SCALE
01·02

Co-located generation

24-unit point-absorber array delivers ≈ 18 MW average / 70 MW peak through a single subsea hub. No long export cable — the data hall sits within 2 km of the lead converter.

03·06

Ocean as heat sink

Direct seawater cooling at 8–14 °C eliminates evaporative cooling towers, drops PUE below 1.10, and saves ≈ 1.4 ML / day of freshwater versus a comparable inland facility.

04

Buffered, not islanded

Onshore battery (40 MWh) absorbs minute-scale wave variance and 6-hour tidal beat. The grid covers seasonal lows; surplus is exported during winter swell maxima.

05·07

Built like a substation, run like a DC

Modular 6 MW pods, liquid-to-chip cooling, two-tier security, latency < 4 ms to nearest tier-1 metro. Designed for AI training workloads where 24/7 uptime is shaped by SLA, not loss-of-grid.

06 Reference design — Pelagos-1

Specifications for the first SeaPower facility, sized for a single AI-training tenant.

Pelagos-1 · 60 MW IT

Site (target)Cornwall · Wave Hub footprint
Wave resource42 kW / m
Mean significant wave height (Hs)2.4 m
Array24 × 1 MW point absorbers
Annual capacity factor0.31
Onshore battery40 MWh / 30 MW
IT load60 MW
Cooling architectureDirect seawater · liquid-to-chip
PUE (annual)1.08
WUE (annual)0.02 L / kWh
Latency to London / Paris3.8 / 5.2 ms
Energy mix on-site68 % wave · 22 % grid · 10 % storage

Why wave, not wind, for compute

Wave power lags wind by 6–18 hours and storms by 12–24 hours, so a coastal pairing smooths variance dramatically. Where wind alone gives 32 % capacity factor, wave + wind + battery reaches 71 % at our reference site.

The 60 MW step

60 MW is the sweet spot for a single hyperscaler training tenant: enough to host one frontier-class run end-to-end, small enough to permit and finance against a single coastal lease.

Built where data centers won't go

West-facing coasts have low industrial competition for land, abundant grid-injection capacity, and natural environmental envelopes (wind, salt, fog) that a marine-grade facility can absorb without exotic hardening.

07 Where we'd build

A short list of coastlines where wave resource, grid, latency and permitting align.

SeaPower priority sites — world map Six candidate coastlines: Cornwall UK, North Iberia, Oregon USA, Central Chile, Southwest Australia, and Wairarapa New Zealand. Loading map… FIG.03 — SeaPower priority sites · Natural Earth projection · screened against wave resource, grid HV access, latency, permitting
01

Cornwall, UK

Bristol Channel and Wave Hub footprint. Existing 33 kV grid takeoff, deep marine industrial heritage, ≤ 6 ms to London-Slough.

Hs 2.4 m · 42 kW/m · TRL 8
02

North Iberia

Asturias to Galicia. Bimep test site, EU Innovation Fund eligible, complementary to Spanish solar via winter peaking.

Hs 2.7 m · 50 kW/m · TRL 7
03

Oregon, USA

PacWave South leasehold. Latency tier-1 to Hillsboro-Portland fiber. DOE Powering the Blue Economy partnership pipeline.

Hs 2.9 m · 56 kW/m · TRL 7
04

Central Chile

Bío-Bío to Valdivia. Among the highest year-round wave power in the world; HVDC corridor under development.

Hs 3.1 m · 62 kW/m · TRL 6
05

SW Australia

Albany / Augusta. Carnegie test legacy, AEMO grid spare capacity, sub-sea cable to Singapore in planning.

Hs 2.6 m · 47 kW/m · TRL 7
06

Wairarapa, NZ

Cook Strait corridor. Combines tidal-stream and wave; Transpower 110 kV interconnect within 8 km of coast.

Hs 2.3 m · 38 kW/m · TRL 6
08 Economics

Wave power doesn't beat solar on cost. Co-located AI compute changes the question.

0
200
400
600
800
€55–95
Solar PVEU 2024
€60–110
Onshore windEU 2024
€80–170
Offshore windEU 2024
€110–480
Tidal streamEU 2025 BER
€160–750
Wave (today)EU 2025 BER
€95–195
Wave + DC offtakeSeaPower 2030E
FIG.04 Levelised cost of electricity · €/MWh

Three levers move wave from outlier to competitive.

1. Captive offtake. A co-located DC pays a power price benchmarked against grid + curtailment, not against wholesale.

2. Capex amortisation. Sharing substation, cooling intake, civil works and permitting between energy and compute halves balance-of-plant.

3. Cooling credit. Direct seawater cooling at PUE 1.08 vs inland PUE 1.40 yields ~ 23 % more compute per delivered MWh.

Sources: IRENA Renewable Power Generation Costs 2024 · EU Blue Economy Report 2025 · OES Annual Report 2024 · SeaPower internal model.

09 Roadmap

Four phases. Modular by design, so each one funds the next.

2026 — 2027

Resource & site

  • GIS screening across 6 candidate coastlines
  • Two priority sites under exclusive lease
  • 1-year wave buoy + bathymetry campaigns
  • Reference DC tenant LOI signed
2027 — 2028

Single-unit pilot

  • 1 × 1 MW point absorber + onshore POC
  • 4 MW container DC bolted to substation
  • 12-month survival & availability proof
  • Environmental monitoring under OES protocols
2028 — 2030

Pelagos-1 · 60 MW

  • 24-unit array · subsea hub · 33 kV export
  • 60 MW IT data center, single tenant
  • 40 MWh BESS for variance smoothing
  • First commercial offtake at < €120 / MWh
2030 +

Pelagos series

  • 3 × 60 MW campuses across Atlantic basins
  • Hybrid wave + offshore wind topologies
  • Open-source siting & survival framework
  • 1 GW order book by 2033