OES Annual Report 2012 - Ocean Energy Systems
OES Annual Report 2012 - Ocean Energy Systems
OES Annual Report 2012 - Ocean Energy Systems
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35<br />
04 / COUNTRY REPORTS<br />
Supergen<br />
Work by Supergen Marine consortium continues (Phase 3 funding confirmed for further 5 years). It is<br />
conducting world-class fundamental and applied research that assists the marine energy sector to accelerate<br />
deployment and provide the highest quality of doctoral training.<br />
Technology Strategy Board (TSB)<br />
In <strong>2012</strong>, the Technology Strategy Board, in partnership with Scottish Enterprise and the Natural<br />
Environment Research Council (NERC), ran a competition for collaborative R&D projects aiming to solve<br />
common challenges to deploying first arrays of wave and tidal devices. This competition, called “Marine<br />
<strong>Energy</strong> – Supporting Array Technologies”, sought proposals that addressed themes such as: tidal array<br />
cabling, subsea electrical hubs, installation and maintenance vessels for tidal arrays, navigation and<br />
collision avoidance technologies and anti-fouling & corrosion methods. Seven projects were awarded a<br />
total of £6.5m of grants via this competition. A key aim of the programme was to share knowledge from this<br />
programme, and a first dissemination event was held in October <strong>2012</strong> to present the aims of these projects<br />
to the industry. The presentations made by the projects can be found at https://connect.innovateuk.org/<br />
web/marine-energy-supporting-array-technologies.<br />
<strong>Energy</strong> Technologies Institute (ETI)<br />
The ETI which is a joint industry Government partnership, makes targeted commercial investments in<br />
projects covering heat, power, transport, and their supporting infrastructure across nine programme areas<br />
– offshore wind, marine energy, distributed energy, buildings, energy storage and distribution, carbon<br />
capture and storage, transport, bioenergy and smart systems and heat.<br />
The ETI launched a project in May <strong>2012</strong> to identify ways of providing a cost effective deployment of<br />
tidal stream technologies at commercial scale in UK waters. The Tidal <strong>Energy</strong> Converter (TEC) System<br />
Demonstrator project will adopt a system and through-life approach to identify, develop and prove the<br />
best routes and supply-chain options to commercially viable tidal stream technologies when deployed<br />
at array scale. The project, awarded to a team led by Atlantis Resources Corporation, will run over two<br />
phases, with funding released in stages according to the progress achieved.<br />
The ETI’s ReDAPT (Reliable Data Acquisition Platform for Tidal) and will soon start testing a 1MW TGL<br />
horizontal axis tidal turbine in coming weeks<br />
Other ETI marine projects include:<br />
ÌÌ<br />
The PerAWAT (Performance Assessment of Wave and Tidal Array <strong>Systems</strong>) project, which has established<br />
and will validate in 2013 numerical models to predict the hydrodynamic performance of wave & tidal<br />
energy converters operating in arrays.<br />
ÌÌ<br />
The Tidal Resource Modelling project which has developed a hydrodynamic numerical which will be<br />
made available to the public in 2013 under the commercial name SMART Tide and will be accessible<br />
through a web interface via a Fee-For-Service managed by HR Wallingford.<br />
SCOTLAND<br />
The £13 million WATERS programme is ongoing. Further investment through WATERS 2 was announced in<br />
February <strong>2012</strong>, with awards issued to successful developers in August <strong>2012</strong>. Five marine developers were<br />
awarded a total of £7.9m to further develop and test new wave and tidal devices within Scottish Waters.<br />
This funding will also enable Scottish Developers and supply chain firms to capture an increased share of<br />
the growing international marine energy market which will help to boost Scotland’s economy.<br />
WALES<br />
Marine <strong>Energy</strong> Infrastructure Study<br />
Building on the MRESF, the Assembly Government commissioned a Marine <strong>Energy</strong> Infrastructure Study<br />
with Halcrow Group Ltd. The study has helped Wales to understand the infrastructure needs of the industry<br />
and identify specific sites suitable for deployments – from prototype to commercial scale.