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.

NEMMO will design, model and test downscaled prototypes of larger, lighter and more durable composite blades for >2MW floating tidal turbines to reduce LCoE of tidal energy to €0.15/kWh, meeting 2025 SET-Plan targets and making it competitive to competing fossil fuel sources. Novel blade designs with enhanced hydrodynamic performance due to the implementation of the different solutions, active flow control, materials and surfaces will be tested. Also, new nano-enhanced composites with properties that increase fatigue-, impact-, cavitation- and bio-fouling resistance of novel blade designs to prevent failures will be made. The project will then model, design and test the lifespan and resistance of the new composites for tidal turbine blades. This will involve: • accurate modelling of harsh hydrodynamic and environmental stresses for the development of testing and validation procedures • a new test rig for the evaluation of fatigue and cavitation on test probes and downscaled prototypes • a testing procedure including bio-fouling and marine environments evaluation in four different real scenarios • development of numerical models for the prediction of lifespan and mechanical properties as function of the materials properties, hydrodynamic loads, time and water composition • Novel tidal generator blades designs integrating active control flow, advanced surfaces and new nano-enhanced composites. The collective result of these innovations is 70% reduction in LCoE for tidal energy due to; (i) 50% CapEx reduction (lower material consumption and 25% lower cost of new composites), (ii) 2% lower FCR (increased understanding of failure and fatigue mechanisms and more durable composites with 66% higher lifespan), (iii) 40% reduction in O&M (reduced cavitation wear, bio-fouling and aging) and, (iv) 20% increase in AEP (enhanced hydrodynamic performance and higher inlet flow speeds for tidal turbine).