OES Annual Report 2012 - Ocean Energy Systems

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