GEOWAVE

Title: Geotechnical design solutions for the offshore renewable wave energy industry
Summary: Sustainable offshore wave energy has the potential to make a real contribution towards the binding EU commitment to source 20% of its electricity requirements from renewable sources by 2020. The vast wave energy resource along Europes western seaboard is unparalleled anywhere in the world. Consequently the EU has an opportunity to become international industry leaders in what is becoming a rapidly evolving and dynamic marketplace. However technical and economical hurdles associated with anchoring wave energy devices to the seabed threatens to stall and limit the impact that renewable wave energy has the potential to deliver. Consequently the offshore renewable wave energy industry has collectively identified mooring and anchoring systems as a research topic of immediate relevance and priority.

GeoWAVE aims to address this immediate research need by providing a structure whereby industry specified research will be conducted on a new generation of offshore anchors and mooring components deemed to have the highest economical and technical merit for mooring wave energy devices. In so doing GeoWAVE will remove the technical and economical hurdle of mooring wave energy converters to the seabed so that widespread deployment on a commercial scale becomes viable, thereby providing new business opportunities for the SMEs.

This 2 year project brings together 3 SMEs, 3 RTD performers and 2 end-user groups from 5 EU member states. The research approach adopted by the consortium involves using complementary methodologies in numerical, analytical and experimental modelling combined with field trials to increase the understanding of the combined response of the system and to develop economical and practical design solutions for the wave energy industry. The new knowledge generated by the project will be fully assigned to the SMEs, who will exploit the assigned intellectual property rights by maximising the market opportunity that is considered to open up by 2016.

For more information, please visit EurOcean Knowledge Gate.