Second Generation technologies in ocean Energy

ended

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.