OPIN – Ocean DEMO Workshop

2 December, 15:45 – 17:15 CET

OPIN is organising a workshop at OEE2020 in conjunction with the OceanDEMO project. Both projects have been in operation since 2019, are Interreg NWE funded and have been engaged in providing novel and innovative supports to help the Ocean Energy sector address challenges for development and deployment.

Since inception, the OPIN project has built a network of over 380 companies from across Ocean energy and related sectors to collaborate and address industry challenges. OPIN partners will update participants on their activities to date and will highlight the supports that OPIN members can access to both improve their own technology development as well as address joint challenges for the sector.

The Ocean DEMO project partners will update on their progress to address significant challenges for the industry such as de-risking OE generating technologies in multi-device farm configuration; developing an active supply chain that invests in dedicated OE sub-systems and components and creating a supportive policy environment for OE by providing governments with confidence in OE and highlighting OE’s economic benefits.

The Ocean Power Innovation Network (OPIN) is a 3-year initiative, running from 2019 to 2021. The project has a total project budget of €2.6M, with €1.5M in financial support contributed by Interreg North West Europe from the European Research and Development Fund (ERDF).

The OPIN project delivers supports to encourage both cross-sectoral and cross-regional collaboration. These supports include:

• Annual Symposiums: providing networking opportunities for members
• Workshops and Masterclasses: to facilitate knowledge transfer
• Technology Assessment Processes (TAPs): to allow companies to assess their technologies and identify potential collaborators
• Collaborative Innovation Groups (CIGs): to encourage SMEs to work together to solve problems in common

Ocean DEMO, a demonstration project, officially launched in January 2019. The project provides funding and support to developers of marine renewable technologies to test their products or services in real sea environments. Ocean DEMO specifically targets multi-machine ocean energy installations and supporting technologies towards commercialisation and the advancement of the OE sector.

Ocean DEMO will ease the transition towards pilot farms by providing free access to Europe’s world leading network of open sea test centres:

• EMEC – European Marine Energy Centre, UK – Project leader
• DMEC – Dutch Marine Energy Centre, Netherlands
• Centrale Nantes/SEM-REV, France
• SmartBay – Marine and Renewable Energy Test Site, Ireland