Wave Energy Demonstration at Utility Scale to Enable Arrays

WEDUSEA led by Irish Wave Energy Developer, Ocean Energy, will demonstrate a grid connected floating wave energy converter (known as the OE Buoy) at the European Marine Energy Test Site (EMEC) in Orkney, Scotland capable of producing 1MW of renewable electricity from ocean waves. This rigorous technical and environmental demonstration will happen over a 2 year period in Atlantic wave conditions with outcomes directly impacting policy, technical standards, public perception and investor confidence. The project will demonstrate that the technology is on a cost reduction trajectory in line with the EU SET Plan targets and will be a stepping stone to larger commercial array scale up and further industrialisation. The action will integrate sub components such as moorings and PTOs - improving efficiency, reliability, scalability, sustainability and circularity of the technology. The combined actions of the work programme are expected to reduce the LCOE for the technology from €361/MWh to €245/MWh, a 32% reduction. For a 20MW array the LCOE would reduce from €185/MWh to €127/MWh.

The project has 3 clear phases, phase 1 the initial design phase leading into a Go/No Go, phase 2 Demonstration in which it is expected that the baseline device will generate in excess of 1,650 MWh over the deployment and Phase 3 Commercialisation and Dissemination which sees the capitalisation and exploitation of the results. Ocean Energy and other consortium companies will actively exploit the results through new innovations, products and services. The results will be disseminated to feed both environmental databases and IEC electrotechnical standards.

This action will take wave energy beyond the state of the art, building on the partners experience in prior EU projects enabling arrays of reliable devices to achieve the 1GW target set out in the 2030 DG-ENER Offshore Renewable Energy Strategy. Planned engagement will create more public perception, empower and inform policy makers and de-risk larger scale investments to meet the 2050 targets.