OceanEnergy collaboration to create step change for wave energy industry
A €19.6 million partnership project aiming to be the stepping-stone towards large scale wave energy commercialisation, is being launched this week at the International Conference on Ocean Energy in San Sebastian, Spain.
WEDUSEA is a pioneering collaboration between 14 partners, spanning industry and academia from across Ireland, the UK, France, Germany, and Spain. It is co-ordinated by Irish company OceanEnergy.
The project is co-funded by the EU Horizon Europe Programme and Innovate UK. The 5 Ireland-based partners in WEDUSEA are OceanEnergy, which is co-ordinating the project; University College Cork; Gavin and Doherty Geosolutions; Exceedence Ltd and Wood
OceanEnergy has developed the OE35, which 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 project will demonstrate a grid connected 1MW OE35 floating wave energy converter at the European Marine Energy Centre Test Site in Orkney, Scotland.
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.
“This rigorous technical and environmental demonstration will happen over a two-year period in Atlantic wave conditions,” explained Prof Tony Lewis, chief technical officer at OceanEnergy. “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.”
Dr Michael O’Shea, research fellow at University College Cork, said: “The learnings generated from WEDUSEA will pave the way for the next step in floating offshore renewables, for example the development of offshore arrays in locations such as the resource rich west coast of Ireland.”
“We are expecting WEDUSEA to take wave energy beyond the state of the art by the collaboration of partners with a multi-disciplinary background,” said Matthijs Soede from the European Commission, “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. 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.”
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