What is unique about this wave energy converter is that it couples most strongly to ocean waves with a certain wavelength. When waves become large, it dives below them with weak coupling. This solves the problem of most wave power plants that when they work efficiently with small waves, they are easily destroyed by powerful large waves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelamis_Wave_Energy_Converter

Wave energy conversion is not yet commercially viable; the Pelamis plants generated 750 kW. This might not seem a lot but it took developers of wind power plants more than three decades to get to that amount of rated power. It becomes clear that wave energy is a concentrated and highly interesting power source.

Also, wave power conversion captures energy that was delivered by the wind in another time and another place. This decoupling of time and space makes it a good complement to wind and solar, which do not provide power when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine - and potentially at a much lower price than battery storage. It is of course particularly interesting with countries with large shores in latitudes of 40 degrees South, like Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina, or in the North Washington State, Canada, Scotland, and Norway, for example.

Pelamis the company went into administration and does not exist any more today. However the core principle seems to have been picked up by a Chinese company which apparently is developing the design further:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/10/mysterious-fac...

Very cool.

Do you know what's the current status of this project? Wave energy is one of the most challenging forms of generating electricity, hats off to anyone working on it!