| Wave & tidal power
Turning shared experience into practical guidance, Matthijs Soede, Chairman of IEA-OES, said, will help countries and stakeholders accelerate learning and lower barriers for ocean energy.
Full deployment French wave energy technology company, Seaturns,
successfully deployed its full-scale demonstrator off the Gironde estuary on the French Atlantic coast in June 2026. A first in France, it marked the commencement of a minimum 12-month offshore trial. Under an innovative industrial collaboration, the trial period will be monitored by ESB, Ireland’s foremost energy company, providing Seaturns with an industry perspective from one of Europe’s most respected energy utilities. The installation marks the culmination of more than
ten years of research and development by the Seaturns team, representing a critical de-risking milestone on the company’s path to commercial deployment and technology certification by 2027. Being conducted 27.5km away from Port of Le Verdon in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, within the jurisdiction of the Grand Port Maritime de Bordeaux, the location was selected for the quality and representativeness of its wave conditions relative to real offshore operating environments, whilst offering excellent logistical access for marine operations. Primary objectives of the trial campaign are to:
● Validate the dynamic behaviour of the floater under real sea conditions.
● Develop and refine offshore operations and maintenance procedures.
● Confirm the reliability and performance of the power take-off system.
● Collect the data required for technology certification and industrialisation. Under this industrial collaboration, ESB will monitor
the key stages of the deployment and offshore trials of Seaturns full-scale demonstrator, with access to technical data and live performance results under real operational conditions. For Seaturns, the partnership represents a significant commercial signal: ESB’s engagement reflects growing institutional appetite for wave energy as a bankable, scalable renewable technology, and reinforces the potential investment case ahead of the company’s planned fundraising round in early 2027. Both companies view this collaboration as an opportunity to accelerate the development and adoption of wave energy as a competitive and viable renewable energy source.
Floating hybrids Floating offshore wind turbines are expanding to water
of depths greater than 100m, but this is posing significant cost related challenges. Recent research has indicated that a possible solution to reduce the costs lies in the design of hybrid offshore renewables, which have the capacity to reduce the levelised cost of energy of offshore wind farms through reduction of dispatch costs and peak generation requirements. Among the range of options of hybrid renewables, the combination of wind and wave stood out. Arredonda-Galeana et al developed the novel concept of a hybrid wind and wave floating platform to provide a minimum power base load for offshore applications. Claiming to differ from alternative hybrid wind-wave platforms and wind and wave complementarity studies, in this work, the authors proposed a novel hinged-connected hybrid platform, which is modular and scalable, in order to provide a minimum power baseload.
By considering the case of offshore PEM electrolysers, whose operational life is reduced when the power baseload drops below 20% of their rated capacity, wave power reduces the downtime in which the PEM electrolyser would have to be shut down in when only wind power is available. The hybrid platform consists of three large pontoons connected with mechanical hinges. The downstream pontoon carries a 5MW wind turbine on deck, and the wave energy is extracted trough hinge motion. By computing numerically a power matrix for wave energy conversion, and assuming mean power production for the wind turbine, the performance of the hybrid platform is evaluated. However rather than assessing performance in terms of power variability, the research gauged it by determining periods of time when the hybrid platform meets a minimum power threshold, in periods of time of absent wind power. The platform was assessed in three locations with
different wind-wave correlation characteristics off the coast of Spain, and on the West and East coast of Scotland. It was discovered that the platform has better performance in locations with high wave power density and low to intermediate wind-wave correlation indices. The authors add that future research could include:
● Improving pontoon design to prevent water slamming and water on deck due to low freeboard.
● Performing a time-domain analysis to understand the effects of transient wind and wave loading on fatigue life and power performance of the hybrid platform.
● Expanding the numerical model to account for mooring line forces and viscous losses.
● Optimising pontoon geometry for wave power capture.
● Assessing passive yaw capabilities of the platform. References
Renewable power generation costs in 2025. International Renewable Energy Agency (2026) Abu Dhabi.
www.irena.org/Publications/2026/Jul/ Renewable-Power-Generation-Costs-in-2025
Ocean Energy The largest untapped renewable resource. Global Resource Assessment June 2026. Ocean Energy Europe.
www.oceanenergy.eu.
A hybrid floating wind-wave energy platform for minimum power baseload by Abel Arredondo- Galeana, Gabrie,l Thomas Scarlett, Maurizio Collu, Feargal Brennan. Ocean Engineering 343 (2026) 123090 .
https://doi.org/10.1016/j. oceaneng.2025.123090
www.waterpowermagazine.com | September 2026 | 33
The global technical potential for tidal power is in the region of 239GW of installed capacity. Breedfoto/
Shutterstock.com
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