Aquamarine Power has already built and operated two full-scale Oyster machines at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney. The company’s new programme, called INNOWAVE, will enable three PhD researchers to explore ways in which to optimise the energy capture and economic performance of Oyster. The Brussels-backed three-year programme will see each researcher dividing their time between Aquamarine Power and NUIM's Centre for Ocean Energy Research in County Kildare, west of Dublin.
The researchers will focus on two areas. One of these will be design, approached from an economic perspective, and will be measured over the lifetime of a wave energy project. The other area concerns development and implementation of control systems applicable to shore-based and offshore power take off systems.
“Aquamarine Power's aim is to become the world's leading supplier of utility-scale wave farm power stations” said Aquamarine Power Chief Executive Officer Paddy O'Kane. “With the survivability and performance potential of our Oyster wave technology now largely proven following four years of continuous deployment at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney we are significantly advanced towards that goal. This collaboration with NUIM will now help us focus on driving down costs and further improving performance.”
Mr O’Kane added that the company has been working informally and sharing its experience with NUIM for a number of years. The award follows the recent announcement of £2 million funding from Wave Energy Scotland to Aquamarine Power, Bosch Rexroth and Carnegie Wave Energy. This will help to complete testing of the WavePOD offshore power take off system scale prototype, as well as delivering the design and specification for a full-scale prototype.
The funding for INNOWAVE was awarded as part of the EU's Horizon 2020 fund, the largest EU Research and Innovation programme with nearly 80 billion euros of funding, under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement.
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