MARINE ENERGY
Advancing wave energy technologies The first EuropeWave Annual Conference was held online on 22 February and introduced the seven wave energy projects selected for the first phase of the organisation’s pre-commercial procurement funding programme.
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ollowing a strong response to the initial call for tenders, seven successful project teams have been selected by a panel of independent experts. They will share a budget of USD 2.6 million to further develop their wave energy device concepts in the first half of 2022. The conference served as a showcase for the Phase 1 projects, selected following a strong response to the initial call for tenders. Project leaders shared their project concepts and discussed how to accelerate the commercialisation of the wave innovations.
Cost-effective EuropeWave is an innovative R&D programme for wave energy technology, which runs from 2021 to 2025. It combines over USD 25 million of national, regional and EU funding to drive a competitive Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) programme for wave energy. The programme focuses on the design, development, and demonstration of cost-effective wave energy converter (WEC) systems for electrical power production that can survive in the harsh and unpredictable ocean environment.
The EuropeWave PCP challenge is to advance promising wave energy converter systems to a point from which they can be developed to commercial exploitation through other national/ regional programmes and/or private sector investment. Match-funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, it is a collaboration between Wave Energy Scotland (WES), the Basque Energy Agency (EVE) and Ocean Energy Europe (OEE).
The seven successful projects • Sea-Saw WEC (AMOG Consulting) The AMOG Sea-Saw technology is a dual hinged hull combined surge and pitch device with two power take off systems (PTOs). The hinge linked hulls with their independent PTOs and the resulting see-saw motion enable the device to access both the long period swell and shorter period wind driven waves, maximising the power production. The system is fully maintainable offshore. The PTOs are easily accessible, thereby enabling PTO changeout by a single vessel whilst the WEC remains on its mooring.
Image courtesy of AMOG Consulting.
• Trimaran (Arrecife Energy Systems) Arrecife Energy Systems Trimaran is based on a platform that causes the waves to break over it and extracts their energy by means of crossflow turbines located on the platform. This approach allows extracting both the potential and horizontal kinetic energy of the waves as opposed to other technologies only making use of the potential one, leading to capacity factors around 40%. The concept is a scalable, modular system that can extract energy from a varied set of wave conditions. Photo courtesy of Arrecife Energy Systems.
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