Scotland has substantial wave and tidal energy resources and is at the forefront of the development of marine renewable technologies and ocean energy exploitation. The next phase will see these wave and tidal devices deployed in arrays, with many sites being developed. Although developers have entered into agreements with The Crown Estate for seabed leases, all projects remain subject to licensing requirements under the Marine Scotland Act (2010).
This project will design, build, install and operate an open ocean 4.5MW tidal energy farm in the Inner Sound in the Pentland Firth, off the Northern coast of Scotland. The project ("Clearwater") will demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of a multi-turbine tidal energy array, an essential step to catalyse development of commercial projects in the EU ocean energy industry. Project Clearwater provides a credible, robustly implemented transition from high cost single turbine demonstration deployments of marine turbines to economically viable multi-hundred turbine arrays in oceans and managed water assets across Europe and the wider global market.
DTOcean is a European collaborative project funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Development, more specifically under the call ENERGY 2013-1.
The drive to meet the UK’s ambitious deployment targets for offshore renewable energy technologies requires the development of new techniques and technologies to design, build, install, operate, and maintain devices in hostile environments at affordable economic cost with minimal environmental impact. It requires a supply of highly trained scientists and engineers to deliver their skills across the sector. The Universities of Edinburgh, Strathclyde and Exeter together with the Scottish Association for Marine Science and HR-Wallingford form a partnership to deliver the EPSRC/ETI Industrial Doctorate Centre in Offshore Renewable Energy (IDCORE).
A full tidal array has not been installed anywhere, commercially to date. A number of the leading turbine manufacturers have part or full scale working prototypes which are under-going testing in various sites the majority of which are enclosed in semi-test environments. In order to move this nascent technology into the commercial arena and expedite market deployment, it is necessary to establish an array of turbines in one site to verify the performance capability and environmental characteristics of a full array.
TROPOS is a European collaborative project funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Development, more specifically under the "Ocean of Tomorrow" call OCEAN 2011.1 – Multi-use offshore platforms. The TROPOS Project aims at developing a floating modular multi-use platform system for use in deep waters, with an initial geographic focus on the Mediterranean, Tropical and Sub-Tropical regions, but designed to be flexible enough so as to not be limited in geographic scope.
The Structural Design of Wave Energy Devices project (SDWED) 2010-2014 is an international research alliance supported by the Danish Council for Strategic Research. The project is a five-year endeavour to harness the energy potential in wave energy at competitive costs.
LEANWIND is a 4-year project that started in December 2013. It is led by a 31-partner consortium and has been awarded €10 million by the European Commission, but its total value amounts to €15 million.
The primary LEANWIND objective is to provide cost reductions across the offshore wind farm lifecycle and supply chain through the application of lean principles and the development of state of the art technologies and tools.
MARINET, the Marine Renewables Infrastructure Network, is a network of research centres and organisations that are working together to accelerate the development of marine renewable energy technologies - wave, tidal and offshore-wind. It is co-financed by the European Commission specifically to enhance integration and utilisation of European marine renewable energy research infrastructures and expertise. MARINET offers periods of free-of-charge access to world-class R&D facilities & expertise and conducts joint activities in parallel to standardise testing improve testing capabilities and enhance training & networking.
Marine energy should make a substantial contribution to the UK renewable energy target of 30% electricity by 2020. Tidal stream turbines are a more mature technology than wave energy devices while the potential of wave energy is considerable. There is a growing capability and confidence in the loading and performance of marine energy devices in operating conditions as designs rapidly develop. However knowledge of extreme loading is less mature and indeed there is some uncertainty about their origin.
