Scotland-based tidal energy firm Nova Innovation has won a major new European tidal energy project, heading a consortium of nine leading industrial, academic and research organizations from across Europe.
The Enabling Future Arrays in Tidal (EnFAIT) project builds on Nova’s existing operational tidal power station in Bluemull Sound, off the Shetland Islands in Scotland, which was the world’s first grid connected offshore array of tidal energy turbines.
The project, which begins in July 2017, and will run until June 2022, has been won as a competitive contract awarded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program to develop marine energy sources and demonstrate technologies in European waters. The project aims to increase the commercial viability of tidal power.
It will extend the Bluemull Sound array to six turbines and demonstrate that high array reliability and availability can be achieved using best practice maintenance regimes. The layout of the turbines will be adjusted to enable array interactions and optimization to be studied for the very first time at an operational tidal energy site.
Total project costs are expected to be €20.2 million, to which the EU Horizon 2020 Program will be contributing €14.9 million.
Nova CEO Simon Forrest said: “The project will make a major contribution to reducing the lifetime costs of tidal energy, and will boost investor confidence by providing hard-edged analytics of commercial and operational performance to inform investment decisions.”
Rémi Gruet, CEO of Ocean Energy Europe labelled the project an important pathfinder for the tidal energy industry in Europe: “The EnFAIT project is an important pathfinder project and will help strengthen Europe’s global technology leadership in tidal energy. The knowledge, experience and expertise gained from projects like this will pave the way for a new industrial manufacturing sector with a supply chain based firmly in Europe.”
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