Ocean Power Technologies gets $2M grant from DOE

LOS ANGELES, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Ocean Power Technologies (OPT.L) (OPTT.O) on Thursday announced it has received $2 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a wave energy project in the Pacific Ocean off Reedsport, Oregon.

It is the first award from the DOE for wave energy.

The DOE grant will help fund fabrication and manufacture of the first 150-kilowatt buoy to be installed off Reedsport.

The buoy and others like it cause pistons in a cylinder to slide up and down as the buoy moves in the water, generating electricity. An underwater cable will transmit the power to power stations on land.

George Taylor, co-founder and chief executive officer of Ocean Technologies, said in a statement that by 2010 there will be 10 of the company's 150-KW "PowerBuoys" to create a 1.5-megawatt power station off Reedsport, pending approval by the U.S. Federal Electric Regulatory Commission.

Ocean Power Technologies is based in Pennington, New Jersey, and was listed on the London stock exchange in 2003 and on Nasdaq in 2007.

The DOE award comes two weeks after Ocean Power Technologies announced that it had deployed its first commercial power-making buoy at Santona off the northern coast of Spain, in a contract with Iberdrola (IBE.MC). The first buoy in that project is rated at 40 kilowatts.

In September, Ocean Power Technologies said it had a tentative deal with Iberdrola to develop nine more buoys and eventually create a buoy farm able to make enough electricity to power 2,500 homes. (Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Christian Wiessner)