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FORESEA programme announces support for ocean energy technology testing

Early in November, the EU backed Funding Ocean Renewable Energy through Strategic European Action (FORESEA) Programme confirmed that it had awarded a 'recommendation for support' to several marine renewable energy technology developers in an effort to help them commercialise their systems by providing free access to North-West Europe's world-leading network of open-sea test centres.

In all, the award will enable a total of ten companies - including Aquantis Technology, Corpower Ocean, GEPS Techno, Laminaria, Mako Turbines, Nautricity, Pytheas Technology, QED Naval, Seacurrent and Zyba - to demonstrate the performance of their technologies in real sea conditions, helping them to leverage the investment required to move ahead with rolling out their devices to the global market. The testing will be carried out at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in the Orkney Islands, SmartBay in Galway, Ireland, SEM-REV in Nantes, France and the Tidal Testing Centre in Den Oever, Netherlands.

'GLOBAL LEADER'

According to Steven Nauwelaerts, CEO at wave power company Laminaria, the FORESEA award is a very welcome development, particularly in the view of the fact that, although European technologies have already established themselves as the 'clear global leader' in ocean energy, he argues it is still essential that a critical mass of technologies receive enough private investment to 'translate this leadership into a new industrial sector and take them to the marketplace.'

"The cost of pre-commercial testing and demonstration for ocean energy is high and investors are reluctant to invest until the technology has been proven in the sea at scale. The result is that precisely at the point when risks are highest and capital requirements most intensive - at the open ocean testing and demonstration stage - technology developers hit a funding brick wall," he says.

"Without programs, such as FORESEA, the costs accompanying open sea trials might be very difficult or impossible to overcome. By enabling developers to test in a professional environment, development can be sped up as well as offering future investors trustworthy data on the performance and reliability of the devices," he adds.

Another company in line to benefit from the free access to facilities is Swedish outfit CorPower Ocean, which will use the award to extend the Stage 3 demonstration program of its high efficiency Wave Energy Converters (WECs) at the EMEC test centre over autumn and winter 2017-18 - enabling the company to carry out operations and collect data across all four seasons.

As CEO, Patrik Möller, explains, the support will also allow the company to test a new micro-grid solution by enabling verification of device performance both whilst grid-connected during dry testing in Stockholm and micro-grid connected during ocean testing at the Orkney installation.

"This will prove to be the two main use cases of the product, grid-connected utility scale wave farms and smaller off-grid farms," he says.

NICHE APPLICATIONS

Elsewhere, Jean-Luc Longeroche, Co-founder and CEO at French wave energy company Geps Techno, reveals that the FORESEA award will embolden the firm to 'make a new step forward' by developing a floating 120 kW WEC unit, which he confirms will 'open the range between 100 kW and 1 MW for commercial applications.'

"By testing that platform at the SEMREV site in Le Croisic throughout a whole year, we will be able to demonstrate the performance of our technology and also bring our customers on to the site to see how simple and reliable our solution is for off grid applications," he says.

FORESEA is also proving to be a very useful programme for tidal energy developers like Australian outfit MAKO Tidal Turbines, which will now be able to use the EMEC facilities to move ahead with testing and demonstrating a turbine model specially designed for marine businesses such as fish farms to reduce their reliance on expensive diesel fuel for electrical power.

"The FORESEA grant will allow us to demonstrate the benefits of the MAKO tidal turbine in conditions similar to our launch customers in the region under the supervision of the world's leading testing facility," says Douglas Hunt, Managing Director at MAKO Tidal Turbines.

"Development of the initial commercial version of the MAKO tidal turbine is nearing completion and the ability to test and demonstrate at EMEC is a very important final step to confirm the cost-effectiveness of our turbines, including their shipping, installation, monitoring, maintenance and de-commissioning," he adds.

ENERGY MIX

Looking ahead, Hunt predicts that, as the benefits of 'predictable renewable power from the tides' is demonstrated at grid-scale and from smaller devices such as the MAKO launch models, tidal energy will become 'an important part of the overall energy mix and offer greater energy security to a wide range of customers who are only now becoming aware of the huge potential.'

As far as the wave energy sector goes, Nauwelaerts believes that, over the next few years, we will see the deployment of the first devices and even arrays, which can lead to utility scale wave energy farms.

"Several devices currently in TRL 5 and upwards hold the potential of being deployed in regions where they can reach grid parity in the future. Focussing on a limited number of devices intended for utility scale production, we will see drastic cost reductions as a result of economies of scale and advanced optimisation of these technologies," he says.

Meanwhile, Möller expects that we will soon see wave technologies converge towards 'a design consensus on which types of wave converters that are the most effective.'

"Today the wave sector still has a wide range of different device topologies, and we can expect one or two architectures to evolve as the winners – perhaps one for near-shore and one for off-shore wave harvesting," he adds.

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  • United States
  • Andrew Williams