The project has also awarded recommendations for support to 12 offshore renewable energy projects under its 1st call which closed in July 2019. The high number of successful applicants shows the growing demand for - and readiness to - testing innovative offshore renewable technologies at sea.
Funded by Interreg North-West Europe, Ocean DEMO is a 13 million project aiming to accelerate ocean energy’s transition from single prototype to multi-device farms by providing free access to world-leading test centres: EMEC (UK), DMEC (NL), SEM REV (FR) and SmartBay (IE).
Successful applicants will receive free access to test their ocean energy products and services in real sea environments at the project’s network of test centres. Technology developers can apply for support packages to test multi-device farms or single devices able to scale up to multi-device in the future. Preference will be given to technologies ready to test by spring 2020.
Ocean DEMO’s 2nd call for applications is open until 31st January 2020. Call documents are available on the Ocean DEMO website.
The following technology developers were granted support packages under the 1st call by the Ocean DEMO Selection Board:
Flumill AS
Waves4Power UK
Vilicom
Sinn Power
SeaQurrent.
Orbital Marine Power
Laminaria
Green Marine UK
FMGC
Magallanes Renovables SL
FlexMarine Power
Bombora Wave Power
The awards will provide a real boost to technology developers by allowing them to test their innovative products and services at sea. It will also help them attract further investment and move along the path to commercialisation.
“Europe remains to be leading the world in ocean energy development and it is great to see that the appetite for real sea testing from a number of offshore energy technologies remains strong” said EMEC Project Manager and Ocean DEMO Project Leader Nicolas Wallet. “Ocean DEMO will help these companies scale up their technologies through demonstration whilst reducing technical risks and overall costs. We look forward to working with these developers across Europe’s leading test centres collaboratively bringing ocean energy to commercialisation”
Rémi Gruet, CEO of Ocean Energy Europe, added that the high number and quality of applications received through the 1st call gives a very promising view of what’s to come for the sector in 2020 and that it proves once again how close ocean energy is to being propelled into the mainstream, and how important a steady European support is to make it happen.
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