Marine energy companies Minesto and Atlantis Resources Ltd. have been awarded €750,000 from the Eurostars Programme, funded by the European Union.
The funds will be used to reduce the cost of tidal power plants by creating cost-effective, high-reliability tidal turbine blades and wings of composite materials. The total project value is €1.5 million off which €750,000 is covered by the funds from the Eurostars Programme. The project is a collaboration between two tidal energy developers: Minesto and Atlantis, both with advanced marine energy technologies that will complement each other rather than compete. Collaboration between different tidal energy developers is essential to speed up time-to-market for power plants that could make an impact on the global renewable energy arena.
Eurostars is a programme that supports research-based small and medium enterprises, which develop products, processes and services, to gain competitive advantage. Eurostars does this by providing funding for transnational innovation projects; the products of which are then rapidly commercialized. The Eurostars programme is publicly financed by the European Union with a total budget of 1.14 billion euros.
In the project, key components of Minesto’s and Atlantis’ tidal energy converters will be jointly developed. Minesto has a unique, patented and internationally awarded technology, Deep Green, with the unique ability to produce cost effective electricity from both low flow tidal and ocean currents. In this project, Minesto will further develop the wing for their innovative Deep Green technology to harness tidal flows of 1.2-2.5m/s.
This Eurostars project supports the flagship turbine, the AR1500, a 1.5MW horizontal axis machine. The project will involve Atlantis completing material testing to understand the nature of the complex composite materials used in blade manufacture; use Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and finite element analysis for detailed blade design; explore the optimization of methodologies and techniques for production; and manufacture, test and certify one turbine blade.
