H2020 boosts floating tidal energy
Horizon 2020 has awarded a €10m grant to advance the commercialisation of Scotrenewables’ floating tidal energy technology.
The Floating Tidal Energy Commercialisation (FloTEC) project will demonstrate the potential for floating tidal systems to provide low cost, high value energy to the European grid mix.
“Scotrenewables has proven that collaboration is a vital component in overcoming the challenges facing successful tidal energy deployment – a view echoed by the members who have joined this impressive partnership,” said Scottish energy minister Fergus Ewing, speaking at the International Conference on Ocean Energy in Edinburgh, which Pan European Networks is attending.
“The Scottish government and our enterprise agencies have been proud supporters of Scotrenewables from the early days of the development of the SR250 prototype,” he continued.
“Scotrenewables has taken a significant step closer to demonstrating that extracting energy from our seas can be a commercially viable, cost competitive option for producing clean, green energy.”
Led by Scotrenewables, the world leader in the development of floating tidal stream and run-of-river turbines, FloTEC is a unique partnership of commercial, industrial and research organisations involved in tidal energy: DP Energy, Harland and Wolff Heavy Industries, the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), ABB Ltd, EireComposites, Technology from Ideas, University College Cork, and SKF.
The project will advance Scotrenewables’ current 2MW floating tidal technology, the SR2000, with the development of a Mark 2 turbine.
The SR2000-M2 prototype will be installed alongside the SR2000-M1 at EMEC’s tidal test site at the Fall of Warness in Orkney, Scotland, forming a 4MW floating tidal array to serve as a demonstration platform for commercially viable tidal stream energy as well as optimising energy extraction for arrays in locally varying tidal resources.
There will be a significant focus on reducing the levelised cost of energy at every stage of the design, build and demonstration of the SR2000-M2, with significant capital and operational cost reductions expected.
“The ambition of FloTEC is to drive down the cost of tidal energy through the delivery of a number of targeted innovations on an enhanced variant of Scotrenewables’ SR2000 floating tidal turbine,” explained the company’s business development manager, James Murray.
“Engineering will commence in early 2016 and will include advanced power conversion hardware, low cost manufacturing technologies, load reduction mooring components and integrated energy storage.”
EMEC managing director Neil Kermode added: “The performance assessment at EMEC will provide evidence of the enhancements that have been made to the SR2000-M2, de-risking the technology and improving investor confidence, supporting the technology towards commercialisation.”
