NeuWave Technologies achieves 60x more accurate wave forecasts for offshore wind
As a PhD student in oceanography at The University of Manchester, Jana Stella set out to make a 100-year wave prediction for the entire British coastline — to identify suitable locations and low-risk time windows for the development of offshore wind farms.
As she began manipulating existing data and prediction models, she realised she was working within an outdated system that lacked precision and was built on fragmented data.
“I realised the entire industry was reduced to relying on very low-resolution, inefficient models,” Stella says. “And it struck me that this was happening in the UK, one of the world leaders in offshore wind energy, where we have ambitious net zero targets.”
She’d previously applied her academic background in image processing to help solve an urgent problem — tracking unseen viruses during the Covid-19 pandemic — and recognised that the renewable energy sector could similarly benefit from a tighter loop between cutting-edge research and industry.
Stella joined Conception X to grow these insights into a solution that could help accelerate the energy transition, and created NeuWave Technologies — an online platform powered by a scalable AI model that takes low-quality wave data, combines it with high-resolution maps of the British coastline, and returns a rendered version to inform more efficient and safer offshore operations.
“It’s essentially like remastering an old movie,” Stella says. “The current resolution for the most accurate model in existence is around 30 kilometres. If you think about how large any wind farm construction site is, 30 kilometres is a rather loose indication of how safe it is at any given time. We’ve achieved a 500-metre resolution.”
NeuWave’s model can predict wave conditions for specific areas, including the impact of storms at each location, with unprecedented accuracy, so energy companies can plan optimal weather windows and map safe shipping routes for new construction, routine maintenance and more.
“Getting those windows right is crucial, especially considering each ship has different limits in terms of maximum safe wave height,” Stella says. “Many operations are currently limited to times of the year when there is very little energy in the wave system — mainly in the height of summer, when there aren’t strong winds or other high-risk weather conditions.”
Stella estimates her model can extend viable intervention windows by up to one month by providing data at 60 times the current resolution, and can measure wave height with an error margin of around 15 centimetres — that’s 10 times less than the industry standard.
While it’s currently focused on the North Sea and the Atlantic, NeuWave plans to develop a globally relevant model that accounts for different temperatures and ocean circulation patterns, and could be ultimately leveraged to mitigate the impact of climate change across several industries — such as aquaculture and port infrastructure.
The big vision for NeuWave, Stella says, is to become the go-to source of information for decision makers looking for reliable, easy-to-interpret insights on tides, waves and general weather conditions at sea — all in one place — making maritime operations safer and more accessible even for smaller players.
The team is currently working on an Innovate UK project with the National Grid to further optimise its database and model around energy companies’ needs, and is collaborating with the Vekta Group, supported by Celtic Sea Power, to refine usability on the NeuWave online platform.
About NeuWave Technologies and Conception X
Stella joined Conception X to explore ways to create impact with her research outside of academia.
“I never thought I could do anything like this,” she says. “The confidence I’ve gained over the past year has been unprecedented. It’s been an incredible, life-changing journey — going from feeling unsatisfied about how my research won’t be used in the real world to being selected for Demo Day at the end of Conception X, which really opened my eyes to what I was capable of as a person.”
Stella says she received introductions to energy companies and support to prioritise potential customer leads throughout the programme, while learning the basics of how to run a successful deeptech company. She also met her co-founder, Christopher Wright, at Conception X, as he was completing a PhD in quantum computing optimisation at The University of Manchester.
“The programme has finished, but I’m still being looked after by Conception X,” she says. “I really feel that.”
NeuWave Technologies is currently raising a pre-seed round. Get in touch with Jana Stella to learn more.
