Technology & equipment | commercialisation The road to
Some ambitious projects have recently been launched in the wave and tidal energy industry that are considered major stepping stone towards large scale commercialisation
Below: OceanEnergy has developed the OE35 floating wave energy device
AT THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE on Ocean Energy in San Sebastian, Spain held in October 2022, a €19.6 million partnership project was launched. WEDUSEA is a collaboration between 14 partners, spanning industry and academia from across the UK, Ireland, France, Germany and Spain. It is co-ordinated by the Irish company OceanEnergy, and is co-funded by the EU Horizon Europe Programme and Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency. OceanEnergy has developed the OE35, which it says is the world’s largest capacity floating wave energy device. Floating on the ocean’s surface, the device incorporates a trapped air volume, with the lower part open to the sea. Wave pressures at the submerged opening cause the water to oscillate and drive the trapped air through a turbine to generate electricity. This energy can be exported to the grid or used in other offshore applications. The WEDUSEA project will demonstrate a grid connected 1MW OE35 floating wave energy converter at the European Marine Energy Centre Test Site in Orkney, Scotland. Prof Tony Lewis, Chief Technical Officer at OceanEnergy, explained: “This rigorous technical and environmental demonstration will happen over a two- year period in Atlantic wave conditions. We believe this will be transformational for the wave energy industry, with outcomes directly impacting policy, technical standards, public perception and investor confidence. Wave energy is the world’s most valuable and persistent renewable resource. However, it has yet to be fully realised. The project will demonstrate that wave technology is on a cost reduction trajectory and will thus be a stepping stone to larger commercial array scale up and further industrialisation. We predict that the natural energy of the world’s oceans will one day supply much of the grid.”
“We are expecting WEDUSEA to take wave energy
beyond the state of the art by the collaboration of partners with a multi-disciplinary background and that it will contribute to the deployment of arrays of reliable wave energy devices to achieve the 1GW target for 2030 as presented in our Offshore Renewable Energy Strategy,” commented Matthijs Soede from the European Commission. “The current energy crisis shows that the use of multiple energy sources is important to improve the security of supply and a breakthrough in ocean energy would be welcome.” Myles Heward, Project Manager at the European Marine Energy Centre, added: “The innovative actions taken in this programme aim to improve the efficiency, reliability, scalability and sustainability of wave energy technology, and reduce the Levelised Cost of Electricity of the technology by over 30%. This will help to de-risk investments in wave energy.” The four-year WEDUSEA project has three phases.
The first phase is the initial design of a device suited to European Marine Energy test site’s ocean conditions . This will be followed by the demonstration at the site, lasting two years. The final phase will be commercialisation and dissemination which sees the capitalisation and exploitation of the results. OceanEnergy and other consortium companies will actively exploit the results through new innovations, products and services. The results will also be disseminated to feed both environmental databases and IEC electrotechnical standards.
Cable installation In September, it was announced that CorPower
Ocean and Maersk Supply Service successfully installed a 6.2km subsea export cable off the coast of northern Portugal to energise the flagship HiWave-5 Project. The 100-tonne cable was installed using the Maersk Achiever vessel and will provide power and data connection from an on-land substation in Aguçadoura to the wave energy demonstration site 5.5km offshore. Now connected to the national grid of Portugal, the
site will initially accommodate the recently unveiled CorPower C4 Wave Energy Converter (WEC) which later form part of a larger four-system array, and one of the world’s first grid-connected wave farms. CorPower Ocean Marine Operations Manager Robert Argo said the cable lay process marks another significant milestone for the HiWave-5 Project, which aims to introduce certified and warrantied WEC products to the market. “We started the installation process by positioning the Maersk Achiever in a safe water depth within
30 | November 2022 |
www.waterpowermagazine.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53
