Open Sea Operating Experience to Reduce Wave Energy Cost

Europe is currently the world leader in wave energy and thus there are significant opportunities for green jobs associated with its development and deployment. Wave energy costs remain high compared to con-ventional forms of energy. There has been very limited open-sea experience to fully understand the challenges in device performance, survivability and reliability. The limited operating data and experience that currently exists are rarely shared, since it is often partly private-sponsored. OPERA will remove this roadblock by delivering, for the first time, open access, high-quality open-sea operating data to the wave energy development community.

OPERA will collect, analyse and share open-sea operating data and experience to validate and de-risk several industrial innovations for wave energy, taking them from a laboratory environment (TRL 3) to a marine environment (TRL 5), opening the way to long term cost-reduction of over 50%.

Objectives:

• To collect, stream and publish 2 years of open-sea operating data of both a floating WEC and a shoreline wave power plant;
• To de-risk innovations that lower mooring cost over 50% and enhance survivability;
• To increase OWC power production 50% and improve reliability;
• To advance predictive and latching control to enable 30% increase in power production;
• To advance standards to reduce business risk and give access to lower cost capital;
• To reduce uncertainty, frequency, risk and cost of offshore operations;
• To improve risk management and cost estimation with real data;
• To maximise impact on the entire value chain and society for wave energy.

Download the latest project publications and work package reports.

Project partners

• Fundacion tecnalia research & innovation (ES);
• Oceantec Energias Marinas SL (ES);
• Biscay Marine Energy Platform SA (ES);
• Ente Vasco De La Energia (ES);
• Iberdrola Engineering and Construction UK Limited (UK);
• Global Maritime Consultancy Ltd. (UK);
• DNV GL UK Limited (UK);
• The University of Edinburgh (UK);
• The University of Exeter (UK);
• Kymaner-Tecnologias Energeticas LDA (PT);
• Instituto Superior Tecnico (PT);
• University College Cork - National University Of Ireland, Cork (IE);
• Idom Consulting, Engineering, ARCHITECTURE S.A.U. (ES).