Engineering firm rides wave of ocean energy
Maine Marine Composites, a naval architecture and engineering firm in Portland, is expanding as it turns its marine engineering expertise to the ocean energy industry.
The company recently moved into a larger office space, leasing a suite at the Marine Trade Center on Portland's waterfront, and plans to bring its fourth full-time employee on staff in January, according to Steve Von Vogt, president of the company. This year the company expects to more than double its revenue, which falls into the $300,000-$500,000 range, Von Vogt says.
The expansion is fueled in part by a new $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to allow Maine Marine Composites and its partner on the project, Resolute Marine Energy of Boston, to continue developing technology to convert kinetic energy from ocean waves into electricity. This Phase II Small Business Innovation Research Grant follows an initial $150,000 Phase I grant the company announced in February. While the first grant funded the necessary development work on the project, this new grant will fund the design, construction and deployment of a prototype wave energy converter, which the companies hope to deploy in the Gulf of Maine in the summer of 2011.
Maine Marine Composites has worked in the naval architecture and marine engineering fields for several years (it received a $600,000 contract from the Office of Naval Research in January to improve the safety of high-speed boats used by military special operations forces), but it has been eyeing the ocean energy industry as a major growth opportunity because the skills and expertise are easily transferable between the two sectors. Von Vogt is also in discussion with players developing technology for the offshore wind industry. "We see ocean energy as an important place to be," says Von Vogt. "It's going to start to build momentum."
He continues: "We see it as smart diversification. We're starting to network and develop the critical mass we need up here in Maine to do work in these areas. We're building off work we've done on military projects and marine projects to fit into where the new opportunities are in terms of ocean energy."
When asked to explain what services Maine Marine Composites provides its clients (the company is often a subcontractor on projects), Von Vogt describes it this way: "We solve complex engineering problems involving things floating or moving through the water."
Von Vogt see his company's leveraging of its traditional expertise as a "microcosm of Maine," where several companies have the opportunity to take their skills in marine engineering, boat building, composite and precision manufacturing and transfer them to this burgeoning ocean energy industry.
"There's a number of wave and tidal projects in Maine and that critical mass is important. Maine is great place to develop that technology. It doesn't have to be deployed here, but it's a good place to develop and manufacture it," Von Vogt says. "That's what we want to see. We want to see stuff built here. And it's up to us to compete to get that kind of work up here."
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments