Tocardo International has in the past ten years developed a technology for tidal turbines for generating tidal power from flowing water. For offshore application, integrated tidal system are needed that require low upfront investments (CAPEX), have low maintenance and operation costs (OPEX) and produce large amount of kWh. Tocardo International has developed an solution which fulfils these requirements. The objective of the InToTidal project is to execute the last step of the develop and demonstration of an integrated and generic solution for offshore tidal energy production, making it ready for successful commercial business application. The system will be tested and demonstrated in this project, while the resulting system will be used for long term testing after the project. Tocardo formed a strong consortium with EMEC, Infremer and LEASK Marine to be able to make this project a success. With a large market potential and strong competitive position, Tocardo is able to grow into a strong and powerful company with annual turnover of more than 180 Mio Euro per year within 3 years (providing work to 60 own employed FTE’s in 2020) and growing towards a 1,0 Billion euro turnover in 2025 providing jobs for 600 own personnel in 2025 as well as >1000 jobs in the supply chain.

The interest for renewable energies has exponentially risen in the last few years. Several factors have contributed to this growth, highlighting the increase of the energy demand, the political instability of many countries that produce fossil fuels, the high fluctuation of oil prices, the countries’ energy dependence and the concern generated by the environmental impact produced by the traditional sources of energy. This fact has boosted the development of numerous renewable energies sources and has promoted the establishment of ambitious objectives by the main world organisations, such as the one set by the European Commission of covering 20% of the energy demand with renewable energies sources by 2020. By using current marine energy harnessing technology, it would be possible to provide up to 13% of the global energy, by extracting 2,200 TWh/year. The OCEAN_2G (Validation and pre-certification of a new 2 MW tidal energy converter) innovation project aims to validate and develop and pre-certify for its later industrialization stage an innovative full-size tidal energy harnessing system solution, ready to enter into European and global markets boosting the growth performance of industrial partners of the consortium and placing itself as a worldwide referent in the manufacturing of floating tidal energy converters. Magallanes Renovables SL has designed, built and tested the 1:10 scale model of the platform in open water conditions, and has finalised the construction of a full-scale prototype. The outcome of this Fast Track to Innovation project is to provide a 2 MW pre-marketable floating tidal energy platform technically validated at Vigo estuary (controlled environment) and in Scotland (real operation conditions) with the involvement in the consortium of the European reference centre for tidal energy, EMEC (European Marine Energy Centre) for the pre-certification of the platform.