Italian energy company Eni makes breakthrough in wave energy

March 7 (UPI) -- Italian energy company Eni said Tuesday it marked a milestone in wave energy, making what it said was the world's first connection of an offshore device to the grid of an island.

A prototype development called the Inertial Sea Wave Energy Converter was connected to the grid on the Italian island of Pantelleria. The device has a peak capacity of 260 kilowatts of power, which is small -- about enough to power 260 average dishwashers -- though Eni is touting its potential.

"This experimental campaign, conducted under real operating conditions, will lead to useful results for developing the second-generation device currently under study," the company said.

Wave energy has been in development for years, with Scotland one of the early pioneers. German energy company RWE deployed a prototype for turbines that run on wave energy in the early 2010s.

In February, Scottish energy company SAE Renewables said a tidal energy array off the northern coast of Scotland is the first facility of its kind to generate 50 gigawatt-hours of electricity over its lifespan.

Construction for the first phase of the MeyGen project began in January 2015 with the installation of four tidal turbines boasting a peak capacity of 1.5 megawatts each. A second phase could start as early as 2027 and SAE is already in the planning stages for a 312 MW phase four.

Eni's device stores an energy conversion system utilizing gyroscopes inside a steel hull. Anchored to the sea floor, the entire system responds to weather and sea conditions, delivering the derived energy through an underwater electric cable.

The Italian company believes that water is an untapped energy resource that could theoretically produce "almost the same as the entire planet's demand for electricity."