As our solitary listed wave stock, Ocean Power Technologies is well overdue some attention.

When you look at their list of projects in Hawaii, New Jersey and Spain, it's clear that this is anything but a highly deployed power technology. One PowerBuoy produces 40kw and only in Hawaii and Spain will these wave "farms" will reach over 1 megawatt - this for a technology that is supposedly scaleable to hundreds of megawatts. In the year to Jan 31st, they showed a net loss of $5.5m, roughly the same as the year before. Nonetheless, this year, they are showing an order backlog of $5m compared to $2.6m a year earlier.

What I like about the technology is that it is modular - need more power, add another one. Wave power is also more predicatable than other intermittant renewable technologies based on wind or solar. In terms of costs, what we have to go on is that it is more expensive than wind but that the CEO believes with economies of scale, within 3-5 years they expect to equal and even be cheaper than wind.

Let's see about that last point - there have been no end of alternative energy technologies who claim that with a big enough production run, costs will fall and they will make their breakthrough - which somehow doesn't happen.