OPERA, a Horizon 2020 project, has retrieved a bi-radial turbine that was undergoing field tests at Mutriku shoreline wave power plant in Spain and is now preparing to deploy the turbine for open-sea testing at Biscay Marine Energy Platform (BiMEP), also in Spain.
The OPERA project team will install the prototype of Kymaner’s bi-radial air turbine at the BiMEP site in mid-September, after integrating it with MARMOK-A-5, a floating spar oscillating water column (OWC) wave energy device, developed by Oceantec.
At the Mutriku plant, a multi-OWC shoreline facility promoted by the Basque Energy Agency (EVE), the grid-connected turbine was undergoing tests for over a year to validate its reliability and performance, as well as to compare advanced control algorithms and implement predictive control laws.
The device was decommissioned in August and moved to a workshop where the MARMOK-A-5 OWC device was being refitted to accommodate the bi-radial turbine for its upcoming testing at BiMEP. During the second round of tests, the turbine will feature a set of innovative components that aim to improve economic viability of wave energy.
Following the campaign at Mutriku, the OPERA team issued the testing results, reporting on the turbine and electrical equipment performance and reliability in a shoreline OWC wave plant, and s horeline OWC wave power plant control algorithms .
The OPERA project, coordinated by Tecnalia and comprising 12 academic and industrial partners, aims to develop and de-risk technologies that will reduce the cost of operating wave energy devices at sea by 50% and subsequently accelerate the roll-out of marine renewable energy.
MarineEnergy.biz staff