The EU-funded Ocean Demo project has opened its third call for marine energy projects to receive free access to testing in real sea environments.
The latest call will focus on supporting technology developers with high readiness level for deployment in late 2020 or early 2021.
Technology developers can apply for support packages to test multi-device farms or single devices able to scale up to multi-device in the future.
A webinar detailing the application process and support opportunities will take place this month.
It will also highlight common themes and challenges that technology developers address during their testing period.
Ocean Demo is a €13m project funded by Interreg North-West Europe that aims to accelerate ocean energy’s transition from single prototype to multi-device farms by providing free access to test centres.
The centres are EMEC in UK, DMEC in the Netherlands, SEM REV in France and SmartBay in Ireland.
The call is open until 5pm UTC on 18 September.
Applications will be reviewed regularly, and support packages will be awarded on a first come first served basis.
Ocean Demo project leader and EMEC project manager Lisa Fitzpatrick said: “Ocean Demo’s main objective is to support ocean energy transition to multi-device farm.
“Many ocean energy devices have been tested extensively and proved their potential over the past years.
“To grow the industry, we now need to scale up from single machine to multi-device farms.
“This next step will strengthen the business case for ocean energy and bring in new investments.
“It is with this goal in mind that we decided to open Ocean Demo’s third call for applications.
“We will focus our efforts and resources on helping developers take that next step towards commercialisation.”
Centrale Nantes European project manager Florent Jube said: “We’re looking forward to reviewing applications for this third call.
“There will be delays in installations this summer, but we still have a strong pipeline of technology developers ready to deploy as soon as the situation allows.
“Hopefully, we will be able to report many successful deployments, including multi-machine deployments, within the next year.”