European cash boost for marine energy developer

The European Commission’s largest research and innovation programme, Horizon2020, has awarded a grant of €10 million (£7.75m) to advance the commercialisation of Scotrenewables’ floating tidal energy technology.

The Floating Tidal Energy Commercialisation (FloTEC) project will demonstrate the potential for floating tidal systems to provide low-cost, high-value energy to the European grid mix.

Scotland’s Energy Minister, Fergus Ewing, made the announcement today, Tuesday, in his keynote address at the International Conference on Ocean Energy (ICOE) in Edinburgh.

Led by Scotrenewables, FloTEC brings together a unique partnership of the most experienced and committed commercial, industrial and research organisations involved in tidal energy today: DP Energy; Harland and Wolff Heavy Industries; the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC); ABB Ltd; EireComposites; Technology from Ideas; University College Cork;and SKF.

The FloTEC project will advance Scotrenewables’ current 2MW floating tidal technology, the SR2000, with the development of a mark 2 turbine.

The SR2000-M2 prototype will be installed alongside the SR2000-M1 at EMEC’s tidal test site at the Fall of Warness in Orkney, forming a 4MW floating tidal array to serve as a demonstration platform for commercially viable tidal stream energy as well as optimising energy extraction for arrays in locally varying tidal resources.