Eco Wave Power Hits All Goals in LA Wave Energy Pilot

A wave energy installation at the Port of Los Angeles met every milestone in its pilot program, Eco Wave Power Global announced on March 31, 2025, giving the sector something it hasn’t had in a long time: a completed project.

The Tel Aviv-based company submitted a full progress report to Shell International Exploration and Production Inc., the corporate backer that co-signed the original 2024 partnership agreement. Shell International operates as a unit of London-based Shell plc. The report’s central finding was unambiguous: Eco Wave had “successfully executed all phases of the pilot program.”

That’s not a small thing. Wave energy companies have spent decades burning through capital without delivering a system that works at commercial scale. This one did.

The installation sits on the AltaSea campus at the Port of Los Angeles. Power generation started in September 2024, running through the trial operating period that concluded with the March 31 report. The system’s design is deliberately practical. Large floaters attach to existing shoreline infrastructure, rising and falling with incoming waves. That motion drives pistons, which carry kinetic energy to a conversion unit located onshore. The conversion unit takes the mechanical input and produces electricity fed directly to the grid. Critically, the equipment that’s hardest to protect stays out of the water entirely. That’s where earlier wave energy prototypes failed, corroding and breaking apart under sustained ocean stress. Eco Wave’s engineers put the complex machinery on land.

The pilot covered five phases: engineering and design, component manufacturing, regulatory approvals, physical installation, and trial operations. Clearing all five inside the original timeline matters for anyone watching this sector. Wave energy projects have a documented pattern of stalling at permitting or collapsing in the gap between prototype and working installation. This one didn’t stall.

Inna Braverman, Eco Wave Power’s chief executive, said the outcome signals something beyond what happened at one California port. “Successfully completing the full scope of this program demonstrates Eco Wave Power’s ability to execute complex wave energy projects together with leading global energy companies,” Braverman told reporters in a statement covered by the LA Business Journal.

Port infrastructure is a logical environment for this type of system. Breakwaters, seawalls, and piers already exist. There’s no need to engineer new offshore anchoring structures from scratch, which keeps costs down and makes regulatory review less complicated, since the equipment doesn’t occupy open navigable water. The Port of Los Angeles moves more container volume than any other American port. Its electricity demand is substantial. A technology that generates power where the facility already operates carries real appeal for managers tracking energy costs.

The California Energy Commission tracks wave energy development as part of the state’s broader push to diversify its renewable portfolio. California’s grid operators have set ambitious targets, and coastal generation with a small physical footprint fits the profile of what planners say they need more of.

Shell’s involvement through Shell International Exploration and Production Inc. adds commercial weight to what might otherwise look like an academic exercise. Large oil and gas companies have funded clean energy pilots that went nowhere. Shell’s decision to co-sign the 2024 agreement and receive a formal progress report suggests this one got more internal scrutiny than a token sustainability gesture. Completing the program doesn’t guarantee a commercial rollout, but it does mean Eco Wave can point to a real project, with a real partner, that ran all five phases and came out the other side intact.

Wave energy’s basic physics have always been sound. The ocean doesn’t stop moving. Converting that motion to electricity at scale, reliably, without watching your hardware dissolve in seawater, has been the hard part. The Port of Los Angeles installation ran through September 2024 and into the reporting period completed on March 31, 2025, with the core conversion components onshore and the floaters doing what floaters are supposed to do.

Braverman’s statement frames it as proof of execution capacity. That’s the argument the company needs to make to the next potential partner, and the one after that.