Former startup CTO says it’s good for teams to have different backgrounds

Ocean Grazer began as a research project in 2014, when van Rooij joined for his master’s graduation project. He was later employed by the University of Groningen to continue working on the concept until formally co-founding the company in 2018. The startup has since closed, but during its time in Groningen, the management made sure to build a strong team.

“It’s more or less a workplace that sells itself,” says Van Rooij when asked about the working culture at the company. It was a great workplace built great technology.

Ocean Grazer developed hybrid solutions for the offshore renewable energy sector.

Van Rooij found that Groningen was a good fit for Ocean Grazer due to its ecosystem featuring multidisciplinary resources on various levels.

The Ocean Grazer team was working on its Ocean Battery, an energy storage system for offshore and inshore waters. According to van Rooij, almost 95% of all global energy storage is pumped-storage hydroelectricity. This usually happens in mountainous regions where energy is pumped upwards and then flows down into turbines at a lower altitude to generate electricity. Ocean Grazer used a similar principle and adapted the technology to the offshore environment.

“Instead of having pumped-storage hydroelectricity in mountains, we adapted it for waters and deeper waters,” van Rooij explained.

Video by Julia Dumchenko and Daindra Utami. Article and interview by Christoph Schwaiger.

This article is part of Make it in the North‘s company spotlight series that highlights Northern companies hiring internationals. This article was originally published in The Northern Times for Make It in The North.