Hello. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for tuning in to the 1Q presentation at Ocean Sun here from our Fornebu offices. Front page today, this is our primary poster these days, the system in Albania. As normal, if you can connect the zipper. Thank you. Agenda for today is as always, to do a short brief on Ocean Sun, our main product, and the purpose of the company. The situation in our operations, and also the future, and markets and the business development. Of course, the financial numbers from my colleague, Karl Lawenius. This is a nice picture that we sometimes use, the water lily. This is a very efficient design for capturing the sun light and turning it into this carbon life forms.
In a sense, Ocean Sun is a little bit of this biomimicry engineering, where you can find the designs in nature so that you can also translate to others. What we do is to capture the radiation and use the photovoltaic effect to generate the power on these large circular disks. Several of them put in together in an agglomerate can make substantial power plants in the utility size. What is special about this is that the use of this membrane is a proprietary technology for Ocean Sun. It is extensively patented internationally, and the benefits are primarily the low capital expenditures that these floaters can be built for with a very lean use of materials, not only on the vessel itself, but also by changing or modifying the solar panels.
Solar panels are traditionally being produced with an aluminum frame that you need for the fixation, the four-point fixation, either on a rooftop or a rack, or a structure. In our case, by deploying them horizontally, fully flat onto the membrane, and supported by the hydrostatic pressure on the other side, we can get rid of much of the aluminum frame. This represents on a large solar panel, this represents five, six, even seven kilos of aluminum.
By checking the London Metal Exchange today, price of aluminum is nearly $2,300 per ton, which means that you can take away, have a cost reduction of around $15 per solar panel. Also, not only reducing the cost, but also reducing the CO2 footprint of the solar modules. It also enables a very fast installation because you do not need to torque the traditional bolts and nuts and washers and clamps, but a smart installation technique instead, where the panels are slided into the membrane. The entire floater, the membranes have the ability to be folded and rolled inside a 40-foot transportation container, which enables a very efficient logistic in a large power plant.
Also another important thing is the high efficiency, the better voltage that can be achieved across the solar cell by cooling down the temperature with the thermal contact to the water body, which is a more efficient method of dissipating heat than the traditional air cooling. We have shown also, last but not least, by rigorous testing in basin laboratory and design within the hydrodynamics and physical experimentation, we have shown that these can operate in a worse sea state than traditional mainstream pontoon-style floating solar systems. They can be used near shore, on the ocean, and also in regions with strong winds, areas with typhoon, cyclones or hurricanes. Okay.
The ongoing activities, like I said, you saw a picture on first page, also the Banja dam in Albania, drawing a lot of attention. Visitors from abroad coming to see this. Picture's showing a group up on the dam structure, looking over the system. We have had a very good experience with this and with the steady production since December last year. We are also using this site to develop our condition-based maintenance system. This is a software application that collects not only the, of course, the production data from the inverters, but also peripheral equipment such as temperature, wind speeds, locations. It can also have a lot of instrumentation that can assist the owner in the operation and maintenance of the system.
You will see on down to a string level where if there are any underperforming strings or modules. Very good collaboration with our, with the supplier of the inverters on this system, in this case, Huawei. Also our R&D activity in China with the State Power Investment Corporation, we have had this very nice R&D activity where these floaters are connected to wind turbine. The development in this is that we are having lots of modifications and learnings from the initial tests. System will probably now be changed out with a single floater instead. This is in the process of being dismantled and taken ashore, and already partly done so.
Experiments will continue later this year further with new designs. Magat Dam in the Philippines, this is one of the oldest system in operation. It will soon be four years of operations. A lot of good experience from this on the long-term durability of our floating systems. There are also. This is subject to research activity with Institute for Energy Technology, Prediktor, and also supported by The Research Council of Norway. Also looking into socioeconomic and environmental topics around that has to do with the floating PV. Also very lot of India, lot of activity there. It's with a very high population density. Some of the southern parts in here, like from Kerala, with very lush vegetation.
This is also known as the God's own country, with a high growth of spices and other products, where it is not feasible to build the large ground mount solar systems on land due to the deforestation and such. While at the same time, large areas with backwaters and waterways that are very well-suited for the floating solar. Today, we think this is perhaps one of the best ways to phase out coal-fired power and to replace with the renewables, due to the very good radiation and a lot of consumers in the region. There are great plans from India government to progress this, and we hope to become a part of that initiative.
Another important thing, as mentioned earlier, the intellectual property or the patents, pertaining to the floating membrane type technology, it's very important and we have now, after quite some while, been able to get a grant for in China for our patent on these type of designs. Now altogether, Ocean Sun hold, 60 granted patents internationally and still 45 applications in the process. We are also very happy that we managed around easier to settle our first patent dispute on an infringement case by another company that was infringing on this, and this was a very satisfactory settlement for us, and we even might seek, yeah, collaborations, ships with other companies this area.
The most interesting projects is coming up in near future is the activity in Singapore, both on with the Sunseap, and in the Singapore Strait, and a little bit later, maybe early next year, the activity with Keppel Infrastructure to demonstrate also this in near shore conditions in Singapore. There is a significant experience with floating PV in Singapore. Several of the different designs have been tested out, both in land lakes, but also in the Strait of Johor. We will get a very nice comparison with the different architectures for the floaters.
Also in the south of Europe with the company MP Quantum in Greece, we are confident that we will start to build the first of the 2 times 2 MW demonstration systems in Greek waters on nearshore locations. The contractual and the license fee has been already awarded by MP Quantum. Those are the most exciting things to follow up on this year and early next year. I think Karl Lawenius will give some more flavor to the market and the financial situation. Go ahead, Karl.
Thank you. Morning, everybody. A short update on the market, starting with Northeast Asia. China is still the market leader, they have still strong activity when it comes to larger projects, primarily on benign waters. However, due to the ban on floating solar on hydropower and lakes that we've mentioned before, focus have shifted towards nearshore and offshore systems. This is very good for Ocean Sun, since we have a strong position here. We have a unique advantage in tackling these conditions in a cost-effective way. Therefore, the patent grant is also very appreciated and sets a very strong foundation for us in our further expansion in China. In Southeast Asia, you have a good development.
There's a pipeline of communicated projects of 14 GWs. A lot of the countries in this region are well suited for floating solar, with large population and land scarcity, and also a growing energy demand. And we, that's reflected in the predictions for the future pipeline. They also have challenging waters and typhoons in many regions, which is very well suited for Ocean Sun. And our track record at the Magat Dam has put us in a good position, and we have several ongoing and very promising discussions in this region. In Europe, we're also seeing increased attention around floating solar. A lot of countries are now starting to look at it and come out with tenders.
We've seen tenders in France, Spain, Portugal. We also see a lot of interest from the governments in the Balkan region. Finally, a good push from the commission with several upcoming research grants for floating solar and floating solar initiatives. On the financials, we had a result of minus NOK 5.9 million this quarter, but still a very solid cash position of almost NOK 57 million. We are well positioned to continue our journey and to expand the number of systems that we have out there. That's it. Q&A.
We have a first question here regarding the patent in China. Is that a full patent on the full rights like you have in other states?
Yes, it is a so-called innovation patent, not to be confused with the design registration or other. This is the strongest form of intellectual property protection, obtainable in China.
The second question: Are you aware of any other systems, operating in the Philippines?
There exist other floating PV systems elsewhere. In the Philippines, at Laguna de Bay, Laguna Lake in the vicinity of Manila, there are being tested other floating PV systems. Without going too much in detail, this is a fairly large water body, the importance of being able to handle even waves on such large lakes is important. The wind loads on the structure is critical for this region.
We also have the longest testing time, right? Almost four years.
Yes, don't think you have had systems for that extended periods, in the Philippines without, yeah.
We have a question, can you comment on the SPIC project and the 20 MW potential?
Like I said, this is an R&D activity and also together with a client in China, we are do not want to venture too far into details on this. It is being has to be aligned with the client, really. Yeah.
What is your current guidance for 2023 installations?
That is the three projects that was shown. It is Sunseap in Singapore, it is Keppel Infrastructure, and it's MP Quantum in Greece. I think, yeah. With all together, nine, a little bit under 10, large floating disks, let's say.
All of these are also, important to notice, large companies behind-.
Yeah
... with ambitions of building more than these small demonstration systems.
Yeah
...of course.
I would say this category is what we refer to as full scale demonstrators that can be duplicated into larger plants.
Can you comment on India since you highlight this in the report?
Well, it is, I think it is interesting that the honorable chief minister of Kerala, with his entourage, visited Norway last year in October. The visit now from Norwegian officials, through from Royal Norwegian Embassy in New Delhi, to Trivandrum in Kerala for this very high level business meeting, in a return visit. The focus on renewables and in particular, the floating solar. This, I think is a very promising development that you place floating solar such high on the agenda by the top officials in India. Although it takes time to progress this, but so it's very promising for the future, I think, and from administrations and governmental bodies to become aware of this possibility.
A follow-up to that question, where do you see the greatest potential currently? I don't know if that's in India or.
Yeah. Well, it is.
... broader
... in the lower latitudes globally, I would say. Of course, it will happen quicker in within states and regions that have a positive view on renewables and a wish for to replace the more dirty energy production and where conditions are right for doing that. It is a huge application area.
That was the last question.
Okay. Thank you very much for listening to the Q1 presentation at Ocean Sun, and we'll see you all at the half year report. Thank you.