2013 - University College Cork

RESEARCH PROJECTS
4
Marine Renewable Energy
MARINE RENEWABLE INTEGRATED APPLICATION
PLATFORM (MARINA PLATFORM)
Research Centre/Department/School:
Hydraulics and Maritime Research Centre (HMRC)
Contact PI: Dr. Jimmy Murphy (jm.hmrc@ucc.ie)
Researchers: Dr. Jimmy Murphy, Dr. Dara O’Sullivan,
Katie Lynch, Pedro Oliveira, Fiona Devoy McAuliffe,
Keith O’ Sullivan (PhD Student).
Start Year: 2010
End Year: Ongoing
Funding Body: European Community Seventh
Framework Programme (FP7)
Funding: €12.8 million
Collaborating Partners: 17 partners spread across 12 EU countries.
Web: http://www.marina-platform.info
Marina Platform is a European collaborative research project with 17 partners. Research in the
MARINA Platform project will establish a set of equitable and transparent criteria for the evaluation
of multi-purpose platforms for marine renewable energy (MRE).
Using these criteria, the project will produce a novel, whole-system set of design and optimisation
tools addressing, inter alia, new platform design, component engineering, risk assessment, spatial
planning, platform-related grid connection concepts, all focused on system integration and reducing
costs. These tools will be used, incorporating into the evaluation all presently known proposed
designs including (but not limited to) concepts originated by the project partners, to produce
two or three realisations of multi-purpose renewable energy platforms. These will be brought to
the level of preliminary engineering designs with estimates for energy output, material sizes and
weights, platform dimensions, component specifications and other relevant factors. This will allow
the resultant new multi-purpose MRE platform designs, validated by advanced modelling and
tank-testing at reduced scale, to be taken to the next stage of development, which is the construction
of pilot scale platforms for testing at sea.
HMRC are involved in each of the key technical work packages
of the project. HMRC are leading the critical component assessment
work package for combined wind and ocean energy
concepts and have developed an economics assessment tool for
these combined concepts as part of the project and are testing
physical models of the various concepts in the wave basin.
KEY PUBLICATIONS & OUTPUTS
There have been a number of papers presented at conferences and
in journals as well as a number of public deliverables all available
on the project website.
Physical model testing of a tension
leg floating wind platform