Entrepreneur makes waves with renewable energy

If Michael Whelan's dream comes true, the Atlantic ocean will soon help keep the lights on in Ireland.

And if it does, it will complete a circuit for Whelan: 30 years ago he was a commercial diver working on North Sea oil and gas installations.

Returning to Ireland in the 1980s, he started a marine towing and salvage company. After selling that business, he opened a quayside hotel in Cobh near Cork. But now he has returned to the sea - to generate electricity from wave power. His enthusiasm for the project, a wave energy converter called an Ocean Energy Buoy, knows no limits.

While everyone else was celebrating Christmas Day last year, Whelan was mooring his 28-tonne prototype in Galway Bay. Over the next eight months, the quarter-scale model was battered by storms. Whelan felt like a fish out of water when he opened The Waters Edge Hotel on the quayside at Cobh - and the lure of the sea soon grew irresistibly strong.

"Building a hotel was great fun but when I started selling food and beds to people, I knew I was in the wrong business," Whelan says. "I had an interest in renewable energy and I needed to get my feet back into the water."