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Alvin with the Searaser
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Searaser 001 A3.ai
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Searaser - How it works
Searaser - How it works
Dared to Dream - Alvin Smith
Alvin Smith is all smiles the day I meet up with him at his Warfleet Creek home, and well he might be: that day he had done any number of press interviews, has appeared on Sky TV and seen his invention Searaser lauded by all and sundry.
But this remarkable renewable energy device, which harnesses the power of the sea, was a dream which came within days of being lost forever – and only the fortitude and nerve from Alvin and his investors took it far enough to be picked up by the world’s foremost green energy company.
I better be totally honest here: I’m more connected to Alvin and Searaser’s story than most journalists interviewing him today.
In October 2006, I was a still green journalist working for a local paper, when Alvin – a man from Surrey who had moved down to Dartmouth in 1997 then working for Pillars builders - walked in.
This friendly chap said a couple of months before he had been struck by an idea for a simple renewable energy device, and wondered if I would do a story about it.
I obliged, taking a quick picture of him outside my office and putting together a few hundred words which appeared the next week.
This story led to an enquiry for Alvin, from Nigel Hart of Kingswear – and a first injection of money for Alvin to develop his idea.
Alvin now put into practice the engineering skills he had learnt from his father – a mechanic - who taught his son to weld aged 8.
‘Nigel saw some potential and invested so I could continue to develop the idea,’ Alvin says, shaking his head as he thinks about how far he has come in the last five years, toiling away in his workshop. ‘There have been many obstacles in getting the design just right, but the basic idea is still there. I wanted a renewable energy system which allowed instant access to power – one of the big downfalls of other renewables – and I wanted it to work with the sea not against it.’
The basic concept of Searaser is one of those ideas so simple that one wonders how it hadn’t been invented before: use wave action as a pump to drive a turbine to generate electricity. The beauty of Searaser is that if you pump the water into a reservoir, you can guarantee instantaneous energy – the holy grail of all renewable energy providers, because wind, sun and even wave energy cannot be guaranteed as instantaneous energy suppliers.
But a simple idea does not allow you to solve the huge problems of making a commercially viable energy device.
Searaser has seven patents on it, covering many simple and not so simple pieces of technology, including the fact that the device uses salt water and seaweed as lubricants.
Alvin and Nigel were then joined by Geoff White and Steve Price as investors. Together they have all put in £300,000 into the company to develop the various prototypes. They received great support from Sir Geoffrey Newman, owner of Blackpool Sands, who allowed them to conduct tests off the tourist attraction.
But going was not straightforward.
As Alvin worked away solving the technical issues which would allow them to have the best device possible, the team found little support for their idea.
Ed Milliband, then Energy Secretary, said that there was ‘no downside’ to the Searaser system – but the Government then failed to give any funding to the project.
‘We had no support from anyone in Government,’ says Alvin. ‘We’ve come through so many challenges in this journey. All the time, despite the money and all those worries, the main concern for me was losing the idea – losing this amazing idea which I knew would work.’
Despite it all, Alvin never stopped developing the product and did all the testing in the River Dart or the sea nearby. They have ended up with a device which is now simpler than the first prototype and more efficient. But there was still no additional investment and the money was running out.
‘We were in death valley, having gone for three years with no extra money coming in,’ says Alvin with the wry smile of someone who has come right to the edge and come out a winner. ‘We set a date of November 30th 2011 as the end – if we had not secured extra support we would let it go.’
On December 6th Dale Vince, founder and owner of Ecotricity, offered the company investment support for a share of the company. They are now going to build the half size 12 metre piston stroke final prototype which will be tested in the sea off Falmouth, the site of the new South West Marine Energy Park. If that proves a success then a full size one will be built – with a wave float of 7.5 metres diameter.
It was light at the end of a very long tunnel for Alvin, Nigel, Steve and Jeff.
‘Dale is a very special man and he has come in to support us,’ said Alvin. ‘We can now move on, develop this final stage and then get it into production. It’s amazing how simple and effective it is – 11,000 of these could power the domestic needs of the UK – that averages around two per kilometre of the entire British coastline and cheaper than the cost of Nuclear.’
Alvin paid tribute to the support he has received in the town since starting work on his idea.
‘There’s no doubt that the people here are more positive and supportive than any I’ve met elsewhere,’ he says, as he looks over Warfleet Creek, clearly grateful for the way his adopted town has welcomed him, his Norwegian wife Liv and his idea for Searaser. ‘You can be here and be an entrepreneur. We will try and make sure that we bring as much as we can here to the South Hams and bring money here to help the local economy. This area has helped us to get this far – we hope the success continues.’
First published March/April 2012 By the Dart
