OCEANERA-NET – supporting innovation in ocean energy

 

Summer 2016


The Ocean Energy European Research Area Network (OCEANERA-NET) project is funded by the European Union through Framework Programme 7. It comprises a network of 15 national and regional funding agencies from Belgium, France, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK, coordinated by Scottish Enterprise. OCEANERA-NET kicked off in January 2014 and will run to the end of 2017.

The objective of OCEANERA-NET is to coordinate activity between European countries and regions to support research and innovation in ocean energy (defined as wave and tidal energy, salinity gradient and ocean thermal energy conversion).

Specifically OCEANERA-NET runs joint calls to support collaborative research and development projects which address identified challenges and promote the competitiveness of the ocean energy sector in Europe. The first joint call opened in 2014, with a total budget of €7m. 9 projects were selected for funding. Projects involve partners from at least two of the participating countries, and generally involve collaboration between industry and research institutes. Calls are particularly targeted on small and medium sized enterprises, to help them build their capacity for international collaboration and accessing other competitive funding, such as Horizon 2020. In total, 20 SMEs are involved in the selected projects. These projects cover development of wave and tidal energy devices, components, monitoring and control systems, mooring systems, electrical connections, reliability testing, decision making tools, tackling biofouling and corrosion, and improving environmental data. A second call was launched in February and applications are now being considered. Information on all the projects will be published on the OCEANERA-NET website as they become operational.

Some of the projects funded under the pilot joint call are now underway. Reliability in a Sea of Risk (RiaSoR) will establish industry best practice in reliability testing for wave and tidal devices, standardise design guidelines and increase safety in marine energy operations. The project is led by the European Marine Energy Centre. More information can be found at http://www.emec.org.uk/research/internationalprojects/. The LAMWEC project seeks to develop and test a full scale (100kW) Laminaria wave energy device, addressing specific technology challenges including a mooring and pulley system that will support the innovative storm protection system, and a new anchor design for depths of 30 to 70 metres. More information can be found at http://www.laminaria.be/lamwec.html. The MOREDATAS project – Methods to Obtain Refined Environmental Data from the Seas – is a collaboration between France, the UK and Ireland. It addresses the need for better understanding and characterisation of wave and tidal energy resources, to obtain better estimates of Annual Energy Production, improve the investability of wave and tidal energy projects and provide a level of comfort for commercial lenders and investors.

OCEANERA-NET will run a series of events from autumn 2016, to promote the work of funded projects, support knowledge transfer and develop opportunities for future collaboration, culminating in a final conference in November 2017. Please register on the project website to receive information about these events.


For more information about OCEANERA-NET contact karen.fraser@scotent.co.uk or visit http://www.oceaneranet.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement No.618099