Aberdeen engineer Ash Penley’s journey from North Sea oilfields to pioneering wave energy technology has been one of bold and brave decisions.
The 51-year-old is the driving force behind the Zoex wave energy converter.
Named after her children, Zoe and Alex, she invested £100,000 of her own savings to get the clean energy business launched.
Now, the mum-of-two is on a mission to raise £3.5 million in funding before
moving into commercialisation of the product.
She also has ambitions to make Zoex a unicorn business, a company worth more than $1 billion or £759m.
No regrets over move to Aberdeen
Born in Ankara, Turkey, Ash studied chemical engineering at the prestigious Middle East Technical University.
As a child, she dreamed of becoming an astronaut.
Though she never made it to space, her early career saw her working in some harsh North Sea environments.
Ash said: “Doing construction in 2,000 metres of depth in oil and gas is as hard as working at NASA”.
She began her career with BP before moving to Aberdeen in 2003 to join Subsea 7, despite warnings there was “nothing” in the Granite City.
Ash, a keen scuba diver, said: “We had some expats in the project, they all said, don’t move to Aberdeen, there’s nothing there.
“But no, I moved and I loved it. I love the Scottish culture. And to be honest, I feel more Scottish than Turkish right now.”
Redundancy led to career change
In 2007, Ash made the move to Australia with her husband due to a job offer and then moved to Houston in 2014 where she worked for Technip.
But a year later she lost her job during an industry downturn, and made a pivotal decision to move from fossil fuels to renewables.
She said: “I thought to myself, one day all the oil and gas companies will be an energy company.
“Technip were getting rid of about 6,000 people. And I went to my boss at the time and said, why don’t we look into opportunities and renewables?
“But the next day I was on the street as well. Which was really, really harsh.”
This was when Ash realised it was time for her to put her years of experience to use and start to create her own vision.
Ash said: “My husband’s job had finished.
“So I said to him, why don’t we just pack up and go back to UK?
“By that time, we were living in a nice American dream house with a pool and everything.
“My kids were four and five and we moved back to Edinburgh, into a small flat in Leith.
“We couldn’t even fit half of our furniture, just so that mother can work on renewables.”
Offshore renewables appeal
Returning to Aberdeen in 2019, Ash ploughed £100,000 of her own cash into the business.
She received funding from Scottish Enterprise and founded Zoex in 2020, naming it after Zoe, 15, and Alex, 14.
Ash said: “I knew renewables was something to explore.
“I wanted to pick something that was developing in early stages. Rather than going after wind and solar, which was more established at the time.
“And because I had offshore experience, I thought I’ll look into offshore renewables.”
She employed engineers from the University of Edinburgh and the University of
Strathclyde, creating a finished wave energy converter prototype in 2023.
The device is a hinged arm attached to a buoy, which moves up and down with the waves, collecting the energy.
Ash realised while working at the competitor Eco Wave Power that she wanted to use a generator instead of a hydraulic system to cut down on the energy lost.
Funding boost
In 2023 Zoex partnered with Sealand Projects, a Scottish engineering consultancy, and applied for funding to test the device.
The Seafood Innovation Fund gave £246,000 and the prototype was tested for two weeks last year in the Port of Aberdeen.
She said: “I was working during the day, and catching up with engineers at nights and weekend. It was really tough.”
After this successful test, Zoex got a further boost in May, receiving £531,000 in funding from Scottish Enterprise, The University of Strathclyde and Equity
Gap, a Scottish angel investment syndicate.
The 100kW prototype has now been installed in Ordu on the Black Sea coast of Turkey to undergo a year of testing.
Unicorn ambitions for Zoex
Ash is now looking to raise £3.5m in funding before moving into commercialisation of the product.
She said: “We’ve just finished closing our seed round, which was over half a million pounds.
“Now, we’re just running seed trials in Turkey, and trying to pitch to investors, trying to raise more money.
“I want to make Zoex a unicorn out of Scotland.
“I want Zoex to be the Wood Group out of Scotland, serving the opportunity of waves and renewables.
“Any pioneer will really serve that wave. Like Wood Group did 30 years ago with oil and gas services.
“Now look at where it is, it’s a shame, really.
“But that era is closed. This is a new era now. And that’s why I wanted to convert the oil and gas sector and the skill sets that we have in Aberdeen to that, because we do need a lot of good engineers in renewables.”
Plans to boost staff numbers
Ash has big plans with the money she hopes to raise, which includes growing headcount.
She said: “I would like to set my core team. And I envisage eight to 10 people, full-time employees by next year and growing 20 per cent each year after that.
“That’s what I’d like to do as this is my passion.”
Ash admits there has been some struggles getting her company to where she’s at but Zoe and Alex have been a huge support.
She said: “I realise now wave energy was a tough nut to crack without a big company behind you.
“I think it’s crazy to be that brave, but whenever I wanted to give up my kids
were always my inspiration; they always supported me.
“Sometimes I wanted to give up, but they believed in me. And I just kept going because of that.”
Ash was previously the winner of an AccelerateHER award in the clean-tech and climate category and Scottish Enterprise’s Unlocking Ambition award.
Conversation