From Concept to Current: GKinetic completes Trials of River Turbine in France
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Source of full Press Release
GKinetic are delighted to announce completion of testing at the Ifremer testing facility in France. As announced in April 2025 GKinetic was granted funding through the RISEnergy Transnational Access Call and it is with huge thanks to RISEnergy that GKinetic brought a 3kW device to Ifremer to complete testing and validation.
Testing took place from 9th to 19th Sept 2025. As part of this project, the company was honoured to have Mr Patrick Frawley, Professor at University of Limerick UL with responsibility for engineering, travel to Ifremer during the test period, to collaborate and authenticate the research results.
Ifremer describe themselves as “the French research institute dedicated solely to knowledge about the ocean. Ifremer’s scientific and technological research, innovations and expertise contribute to protecting and restoring the ocean, sustainably managing marine resources and environments and sharing marine data and information. Ifremer plays an active role in national, European and international scientific initiatives and programmes”
Having used the facility before, GKinetic knew this was the most suitable and appropriate facility in which to test the new design.
Dr Gregory Germain (Pictured above with Gary Brennan CTO GKinetic and Vincent McCormack CEO GKinetic) who is part of the team at the Wave and Current Flume tank in Ifremer, is quoted to say “Ifremer is pleased to welcome its first winner of the first RISEnergy Transnational Access Call. The project led by GKinetic for the development of a river current recovery system has caught the attention of experts for fully funded access to Ifremer research infrastructures: the Wave and current flume tank. The experimental work carried out to optimize turbine behavior plays an important role in the clean energy transition”.
The controlled conditions in the flume at Boulogne enabled experimentation with different blade pitch angles and analysis of power outputs and bypass flows. The high-spec lab equipment provided the essential data on 3D flow patterns around and through the turbines. The unit has already performed well in the field during summer testing, so the tank has enabled the team to validate performances under specific, controlled settings, making very precise and minor tweaks to keep optimising and improving the performance.
On speaking with Vincent McCormack CEO and founder of GKinetic Energy Ltd. “The objective of our work here at the IFREMER flume at Boulogne Sur Mer is to continue optimising our system outputs by analysing our turbine hydro dynamics. We have found the IFREMER team at Boulogne to be highly experienced professionals and a pleasure to work with. There is a great range of equipment that enables different options for data analysis, due to the skills and proactive nature of the team it feels like anything is possible”
GKinetic is well known for its 12kW hydrokinetic turbine ‘CEFA12’ which has been researched, built and tested over the last number of years culminating with its deployment as part of the CityXchange/Horizon project in Limerick. While working on this larger device the company kept getting requests for variations of this core machine with a smaller output that would be usable in domestic situations, in shallower waters or even combined in arrays to give larger outputs for commercial entities, businesses and farms. The company went back to the drawing board to develop an affordable and compact 3kW machine that would tick all these boxes and proves the old adage “There’s nothing good that can’t be improved on”.
As the 10 days of testing concludes the GKinetic team are delighted with the performance of the new device and the experts on the Ifremer team are extremely supportive of the possibilities for such groundbreaking technology. Now GKinetic will use the outcomes from this project to improve the efficiencies of the turbine systems, it will enable selection of appropriate blade pitch angles and sizes for a range of flows to optimise the performance of the device. Vincent and his team will be returning to Ireland ready to make those adjustments for optimum performance and with plans already in place for the first commercial pilot of the 3kW device it is exciting times ahead indeed for this clean energy company.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No 101131793”
ENDS
Press Contact: info@gkinetic.com