OCTARRAY is part of an an ambitious 3-year tidal array demonstration programme located in North Western French territorial waters of the Raz Blanchard, a 15 km strait situated between Cap de la Hague and Alderney Island. The array (known as the Normandie Hydro array) will consist of 7 x 2.0MW Open-Centre Turbines (OCT) designed and constructed by the OpenHydro Group which will be installed at depths of between 30 and 40 meters with a total capacity of 14MW. The turbines will be connected by inter-array cabling via a subsea connector and exported onto the grid via an export cable and substation. The project is scheduled to commence operations and begin exporting grid compliant power to the French National Grid in 2019. The objectives of the project are to develop, construct and operate a tidal turbine array in real conditions and to test and confirm the technical and economic viability of tidal energy in preparation for developments on an industrial and commercial scale. The successful demonstration of the pilot array will achieve several technical, industrial, economic and commercial ‘firsts’ which will facilitate and accelerate the development and growth of the tidal industry. OCTARRAY will establish new knowledge and capability to enable the scale up to future commercial arrays (up to 300MW), Levelised Cost of Energy reduction and will provide valuable data and learning on array effects and performance for the benefit of future tidal array projects in the rest of Europe and strategic locations in the world for renewable energy development. Through projects such as OCTARRAY and the Normandie Hydro array, Europe has the opportunity to significantly build its reputation as a world leader in the development and integration of tidal energy, and benefit from the diversity that the technology brings to the overall energy generation portfolio.

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.

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.

There is 10 GW of predictable, high value tidal stream potential in European waters, with up to 100 GW of capacity globally. It is an entirely unharnessed resource, with just 13 MW currently deployed . FORWARD-2030 has an overall objective to fast track 2030MW of tidal energy deployment by 2030. The project has five specific objectives: 1. Reducing Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) from ?200/MWh to ?150/MWh, 2. Enhancing environmental and societal acceptance, 3. Complete industrial design for volume manufacture rollout for 10 and 100+ MW projects, 4. Reducing life cycle carbon emissions by 33% from 18 gCO2 eq/kWh to 12 gCO2 eq/kWh, 5. Enhancing commercial returns and energy system integration (with battery storage and green hydrogen production). Objective 1 is focused on fast-tracking innovation to support the development of a technically and commercially viable tidal energy solution by rapidly reducing LCOE. This will be achieved by developing and verifying seven high priority cost reduction innovations to reduce CAPEX, reduce OPEX, increase efficiency and increase availability. Objectives 2, 3, 4 and 5 are focused on the regulatory and commercial barriers that must be overcome to achieve the project vison of installing 2030MW of tidal energy by 2030. It will be achieved by developing three market uptake innovations: an integrated environmental monitoring system, an energy management system, and an operational forecasting tool. Four market rollout initiatives will be completed: a supply chain plan for large scale roll out, Societal Cost of Energy (SCOE) assessment tool, marine spatial planning to encompass floating tidal and a life cycle carbon reduction assessment.

WaveBoost aims at providing a step-change improvement to the reliability and performance of PTOs (Power-Take-Offs), by developing and validating an innovative braking module with a Cyclic Energy Recovery System (CERS). While built and tested on the platform of the existing CorPower technology, the CERS braking module can be integrated in many types of Wave Energy Converters (WECs). Especially for point absorbers - undisputedly the WEC type with best prospects for large-scale development - WaveBoost will solve a central reliability challenge, the so-called 'end-stop' problem (excessive, uncontrolled forces when linear movement reaches end of stroke). Further, dedicated reliability assessment methods will be developed and applied. CERS is an energy redistribution system that will allow WECs to absorb more energy from high energy wave cycles, temporarily storing excessive energy in the first step of the PTO chain, then releasing it for conversion through the remaining steps of the PTO in low energy wave cycles. Similar systems are being used in other sectors (e.g. automotive) but have not been applied to ocean energy. The additional damping force required to safely stop the motion of WECs in storm waves may be several times larger than the PTO force used to convert wave motion into electricity. By providing the extra damping needed from the CERS module, system survivability and reliability of critical components are significantly improved. Another consequence is a size reduction of the PTO for the same power rating, and an increase of the Annual Electricity Production (AEP). The technology allows WECS to operate at higher average loading, increasing average conversion efficiency. Further, the grid compliance of electricity produced is significantly improved through this new energy storage concept. The improvements described above are expected to significantly reduce shock loads on WECs, increase in AEP of 25% and reduce LCOE more than 30% compared to the state of art.