Four Welsh universities have joined the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult’s Marine Energy Engineering Centre of Excellence (MEECE), based in Pembroke Dock.
Swansea, Cardiff, Cardiff Metropolitan and Bangor Universities will support innovation projects through ORE Catapult’s flagship hub for advancing the Welsh marine and offshore renewable energy sectors.
Part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), through the Welsh Government and Swansea Bay City Deal, MEECE is part of the £60m Pembroke Dock Marine Project.
The project aims to be a catalyst for research, technology innovation and testing and demonstration to accelerate the commercialisation of the wave, tidal and offshore wind sectors by reducing the cost of energy, improving efficiency and reliability, and supporting the growth of the Welsh supply chain.
Swansea University will act as lead academic partner and will coordinate activity within the university partners, working closely with organisations including UK EPSRC, Supergen ORE, Ocean Energy Europe and other coordinating bodies to ensure that projects are complementary to other funded activities.
Swansea also has experience in numerical modelling and the physical testing of wave and tidal devices.
Cardiff University’s Cardiff Marine Energy Research Group (CMERG) and Hydro-environmental Research Centre (HRC) have tested scale models of tidal stream turbines, leading to a greater understanding of how the dynamic tidal environment influences turbine performance and reliability.
It also has expertise in hydro-environmental and computational fluid dynamics modelling to enhance the design of various devices and assess their far-field impacts as well as operating several flume tanks and tidal basins.
Cardiff Metropolitan’s research interests are in the areas of sustainable and resilient supply chains, ethics, and corporate social responsibility and its impact on managing our global supply chains.
Bangor University has experience in physical oceanography research and has developed advanced numerical modelling capabilities to characterise wave and tidal energy resources, as well as the impacts of extracting energy from the ocean.
It has also undertaken survey work in potential marine energy sites around the Welsh coastline.
The universities are supporting new MEECE-led projects.
Swansea will support Natural Power and Anakata in the design and testing of aerodynamic add-ons, referred to as vortex generators, to improve the energy yield of wind turbines.
Bangor University will also be involved in two projects.
One is supporting Applied Petroleum Technology (APT) in the development of a user-friendly, cloud-based constraints mapping tool to streamline the development and planning of offshore wind farms.
The other is supporting Sea Watch Foundation (SWF) in the development of a mobile app for use by the public to register sightings of cetaceans, which can be used to assist project developers during the consenting process of offshore renewable energy projects.