A 1 MW wave energy demonstration project in Orkney has secured €19.6 million (£16.5m) for a two year grid connected trial.
The Wave Energy Demonstration at Utility Scale to Enable Arrays (WEDUSEA) project will deploy the world’s largest capacity floating wave energy device for a two year trial.
UK government innovation agency Innovate UK will co-fund the project alongside the EU Horizon Europe programme, with additional funding from industry partners.
Developed by Irish company OceanEnergy, the 1 MW OE35 device will undergo a “rigorous technical and environmental demonstration” at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) test site at Billia Croo in Orkney.
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.
The project will then export electricity generated to the UK grid via EMEC’s subsea cables.
© OceanEnergyThe aim of the trial is to improve the efficiency, reliability, scalability and sustainability of wave energy technology and reduced the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) by over 30%.
According to WEDUSEA, this will help to “de-risk investments in wave energy” and be a stepping stone to large scale commercialisation of the technology.
WEDUSEA involves 14 collaborators across industry and academia from the UK, Ireland, France, Germany and Spain.
Led by OceanEnergy, other partners include Wood, the University of Plymouth, French firm Innosea and Germany’s Fraunhofer Society.
The Orkney trials follows a similar deployment of an OE35 device at the US Navy Wave Energy Test Site in Hawaii earlier this year.
Wave energy
OceanEnergy chief technical officer Professor Tony Lewis said the firm believes the “natural energy of the world’s oceans will one day supply much of the grid.”
“Wave energy is the world’s most valuable renewable resource with around 30TWh of potential annual production waiting to be harnessed,” Professor Lewis said.
“That’s almost ten times Europe’s annual electricity consumption. However, this potential has yet to be fully realised.
© Supplied by Mocean“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.”
European Commission senior policy officer Matthijs Soede said WEDUSEA is “set to be a major catalyst for the wave energy industry, unlocking the full potential of this exciting renewable technology”.
WEDUSEA project
The WEDUSEA project will take place across three phases.
The first phase involves the initial design and build of a device suited to the ocean conditions at EMEC’s Billia Croo wave energy test site.
The next phase will be the demonstration at the site, lasting two years.
Meanwhile, the final phase will involve commercialisation and dissemination which sees the “capitalisation and exploitation of the results”.
The EU committed €9.6m (£8.1m) to the project, with Innovate UK contributing €5.4m (£4.5m) and industry partners funding the remainder of the €19.6m total.
WEDUSEA joins Scotland’s Mocean Energy and Sweden’s CorPower in testing wave energy devices at EMEC in Scotland.
