The 37-hectare site is open to entrepreneurs and engineers to test prototype ocean energy generators.

It is part of a joint Marine Institute and Sustainable Energy Ireland (SEI) initiative.

The . rst wave energy generator, known as the Wavebob, was deployed on the Spiddal site and, if successful, Ireland could become a huge exporter of research and development in this area.

"Nobody has cracked wave energy yet but there is the possibility of Ireland being among the early developers of this technology, " says Eoin Sweeney, technology manager at the Marine Institute.

"The ocean is the greatest source of energy on earth and it certainly warrants serious efforts to try to harness it. From our perspective, we would be building up an export industry in ocean energy know-how and we're predicting the creation of 2,000 jobs in this sector."

The Marine Institute and SEI have invested �?�300,000 in university-based research and a further �?�850,000 in industrybased research into ocean energy technology. Signi. cant private investments have also come from entrepreneurs like Wavebob inventor William Dick.

Some of Wavebob's testing was performed at the Hydraulics and Maritime Research Centre at University College Cork, a centre which Eoin Sweeney says is ?one of the reasons wave energy has developed' in Ireland.