Orbital Marine Power is to lead a pan-European consortium to deliver the EU-backed Forward-2030 project, set up to accelerate the commercial deployment of floating tidal energy.
Forward-2030 will receive €20.5m of grant support from the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme to develop a multi-vector energy system for the future.
The system will combine floating tidal energy, wind generation, grid export, battery storage and green hydrogen production.
The project will see the installation of the next iteration of the Orbital turbine, integrated with a hydrogen production facility and battery storage at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney.
Orbital said project partners will design options for integrating large scale tidal power into future net zero energy systems, whilst developing environmental monitoring and marine spatial planning tools for large floating tidal arrays.
The company will act as project coordinator as well as lead technology developer for the Forward-2030 project and be supported by technical partner SKF.
SKF will design and build an optimised fully integrated power train solution, designed for volume manufacture.
The next generation turbine will be deployed at EMEC’s Fall of Warness tidal test site off Eday in Orkney.
EMEC will host the demonstration, facilitate hydrogen production, deliver a comprehensive environmental monitoring programme, and develop a live environmental monitoring system and test programme.
Laborelec will assess large scale integration of tidal energy to the European energy system, develop a smart energy management system and an operational forecasting tool.
The University of Edinburgh will deliver techno-economic analysis of tidal energy, and the MaREI Centre at University College Cork will be responsible for addressing marine spatial planning issues for wide scale uptake of tidal energy.
Orbital commercial director Oliver Wragg said: “This endorsement of the Orbital technology by the European Commission is a huge vote of confidence in our capability to deliver commercially viable tidal energy.
We now have a focused and highly experienced consortium dedicated to the delivery of tidal energy and committed to accelerating its future uptake.
This alignment of interest sets Forward-2030 on course to have a meaningful impact as we build towards large scale commercially viable tidal energy projects.
“Orbital has consistently delivered step changes in cost reduction for the tidal energy sector and the Forward-2030 project will enable us to take that next step.”