The EU-funded Ocean DEMO project opened its 3rd call today. Successful applicants will receive free access to test their ocean energy products and services in real sea environments at the project’s network of test centres. This new call will focus on supporting technology developers with high readiness level for deployment in late 2020 or early 2021. Technology developers can apply for support packages to test multi-device farms or single devices able to scale up to multi-device in the future. A webinar detailing the application process and support opportunities will take place in a few weeks.
Funded by Interreg North-West Europe, Ocean DEMO is a €13m project aiming to accelerate ocean energy’s transition from single prototype to multi-device farms by providing free access to world-leading test centres: EMEC (UK), DMEC (NL), SEM REV (FR) and SmartBay (IE).
The third Ocean DEMO call for applications is open until 18th September 2020, at 17:00 UTC. Applications will be reviewed regularly, and support packages will be awarded on a first come first served basis. Call documents are available on the Ocean DEMO website.
In addition, an Ocean DEMO webinar will take place at the end of June to present the application system as well as the available support packages. It will also highlight common themes and challenges that technology developers address during their testing period. The exact date and registration link will be available on the Ocean DEMO website shortly.
Lisa Fitzpatrick, Project Manager at EMEC and Ocean DEMO Project Leader, said:
“Ocean DEMO’s main objective is to support ocean energy transition to multi-device farm. Many ocean energy devices have been tested extensively and proved their potential over the past years. To grow the industry, we now need to scale up from single machine to multi-device farms. This next step will strengthen the business case for ocean energy and bring in new investments.
It is with this goal in mind that we decided to open Ocean DEMO’s 3rd call for applications. We will focus our efforts and resources on helping developers take that next step towards commercialisation.”
Florent Jubé, European Project Manager at Centrale Nantes said:
“We’re looking forward to reviewing applications for this 3rd call. There will be delays in installations this summer, but we still have a strong pipeline of technology developers ready to deploy as soon as the situation allows.
Hopefully, we will be able to report many successful deployments, including multi-machine deployments, within the next year.”