Carnegie wins Phase 2 EuropeWave PCP Contract

Carnegie, via its wholly owned subsidiary, CETO Wave Energy Ireland Limited, has been selected as 1 of 5 contractors to deliver Phase 2 of the €20m EuropeWave Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) Programme, a competitive programme to advance wave energy.

This follows the competitive selection and successful performance of CETO in Phase 1 of the programme.

CETO Wave Energy Ireland Limited was selected alongside four other companies, out of the initial seven that delivered Phase 1, to deliver Phase 2 of the programme.

Phase 2 includes Front End Engineering Design (FEED), wave tank testing, power take off component testing and related certification and commercialisation activities. Phase 2 will run from the end of September 2022 to June 2023.

Rigorous evaluations were carried out to progressively select the best of the competing solutions. This selection shows the potential for the CETO technology to be a frontrunner in the European wave energy space. Positive feedback was received in areas such as the techno-economic optimisation, approach to system performance, advanced control, levelised cost of energy (LCOE) mod modelling and forecasts, proposed activities, risk management and a strong and capable project team.

Phase 2 follows Concept Development in Phase 1, which delivered substantial progress in advancing the CETO prototype design and validation work through tank testing in Spain.

Following the completion of Phase 2, three of the five companies will be selected on competitive basis to continue to the final Phase 3, which includes deployment in open sea conditions at the Biscay Marine Energy Platform (BiMEP) in the Basque Country or the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Scotland. The final phase is expected to start in September 2023 and conclude in May 2026.

Partners

CETO Wave Energy Ireland will deliver Phase 2 of the EuropeWave PCP with the support of an impressive team including its consortium partner SAITEC Offshore Technologies and subcontractors Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Hutchinson, DNV (including support from Yavin Four Consultants), IHCantabria and Julia F. Chozas Consulting Engineer. All the Phase 1 partners will continue to be involved and are being joined by new project partners, Hewlett Packard Enterprise who will be involved in the reinforcement learning based control and Hutchinson, who will be involved in the design and testing of the belt component of the power take-off system.

About Phase 2

Under the Phase 2 contract, the team will complete various development and testing activities which progress CETO towards a potential European prototype deployment in Phase 3. This includes activities such as: Front End Engineering Design (FEED), Numerical Modelling, Power Take-Off Testing, Tank Testing, Operational Planning, Commercial Analysis and progressing the Certification Pathway with DNV.

A wave tank testing campaign will be undertaken at the Cantabria Coastal and Ocean Basin (CCOB) in Spain in early 2023. The tests will build on previous tank testing undertaken during Phase 1 and will validate the performance of CETO’s advanced controllers and confirm a novel survival strategy, key advantages of the CETO technology.

A Power Take-Off (PTO) bench testing campaign will occur in early 2023 and will validate the fatigue life of the belt and characterise the efficiency and reliability of the PTO drive train, controller and electrical system. This work will be done in collaboration with the IMPACT project, which is developing test rigs that will be utilised by the team. Carnegie will retain ownership of the intellectual property rights (IPRs) generated during the PCP Programme and will be able to use the IP to exploit the full market potential of the developed solutions.

About EuropeWave

EuropeWave PCP is an innovative and competitive stage-gate programme designed to advance promising wave energy converter systems to a point from which they can be developed for commercial exploitation through other national/regional programmes and/or private investment.

With almost €20 million in funding for the 3 phases of the programme, the EuropeWave PCP is a collaboration between Wave Energy Scotland (WES), a subsidiary of the Scottish Government’s Highlands and Islands Enterprise, and the Basque Energy Agency (EVE).

The EuropeWave project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 883751.