The workshop organized by EMEC, ORE Catapult and AFRC offered an overview of why wave and tidal devices’ components fail, followed by facilitated discussions with delegates sharing their experiences of component failures and lessons learnt.
The workshop was held as part of the project jointly developed by EMEC, ORE Catapult and Advanced Forming Research Centre (AFRC) that aims to improve wave and tidal components reliability.
From this, a database of component information will be built to be used by the offshore renewables supply chain, technology, and project developers, according to EMEC.
The next stage in this pilot project is to carry out analysis on a variety of components that have undergone real-sea testing, and feed the results into a database to enable knowledge sharing across the industry.
The testing phase is due to be completed in early 2016, and a report will be published shortly after, with details of the findings, as well as the launch of the database for joint use across the industry.
The workshop was attended by the representatives of companies within wave and tidal energy sector, including Albatern, Andritz Hydro Hammerfest, Aquamarine Power, Helix Wave Energy, Nautricity, Nova Innovation, Quoceant, Sustainable Marine Energy, and Trelleborg Sealing Solutions.
Image: EMEC