Preparations to test wave energy innovations in open water

The EU-funded EuropeWave project has booked berths at the open-water test sites of the Biscay Marine Energy Platform (BiMEP) in the Basque Country, Spain, and the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney, Scotland. The berths have been reserved for the final stage – Phase 3 – of EuropeWave’s pre-commercial procurement programme. During this stage, three prototype WEC systems will be deployed in the first half of 2025 for demonstrations and operational testing over a 12-month period.

As their name suggests, WECs harvest energy from waves in the ocean and turn it into electricity. After years of extensive testing, technology developers across Europe are now racing to commercialise their WEC devices. The market for these technologies is huge. The energy generated from waves has an estimated potential capacity of up to 29 500 terawatt-hours a year. This means that wave energy alone is capable of meeting the entire world’s energy demands.

But how many of the numerous innovations currently under development will achieve commercialisation? What the energy sector now needs is support systems to make this possible. EuropeWave is fulfilling this role by taking technologies that prove themselves and propelling them to the commercial stage.The project will select three contractors to proceed to Phase 3 of EuropeWave’s pre-commercial procurement programme in the summer of 2023. Two systems will be deployed at the BiMEP test site and one system at EMEC’s Billia Croo test site.

The three wave energy projects will be chosen from the five that progressed to the second stage of the programme. The five successful contractors so far are Arrecife Energy Systems (Spain), AMOG Consulting (United Kingdom), CETO Wave Energy Ireland (Ireland), IDOM Consulting, Engineering, Architecture (Spain) and Mocean Energy (United Kingdom).

“Reserving berths at EMEC and BiMEP is a key milestone for the EuropeWave programme that secures access to the test sites for the Phase 3 technology demonstrations,” states Tim Hurst, Managing Director of EuropeWave project coordinator Wave Energy Scotland, in a news item posted on ‘Offshore Energy’. “Deploying and operating devices in real-sea conditions is the ultimate challenge of the EuropeWave programme, demonstrating performance of the devices and their sub-systems and providing real-world learning about operational practices.”

Endika Aldaiturriaga, Project Manager of EuropeWave project partner Ente Vasco de la Energía, the Basque government’s energy agency, adds in the same news item: “The signature of these agreements is a fundamental step towards successful achievement of EuropeWave project objectives; the design, deployment and testing of three promising technologies in open sea. These deployments will take place in well-prepared and recognized testing areas, that bring extensive experience in hosting wave energy converter tests, facilitating the job for the developers and giving them confidence in the sector-wide recognition of their work. For the EuropeWave Buyer’s Group, collaboration with BiMEP and EMEC is a guarantee of quality on the results and robustness on the process we are pushing forward.”

EuropeWave (Bridging the gap to commercialisation of wave energy technology using pre-commercial procurement) ends in May 2026.

For more information, please see:

EuropeWave project website