Ocean DEMO opens 4th call, be part of our success
The EU-funded Ocean DEMO project 4th call opens on 4 June 2021. Successful applicants will receive free access to test their ocean energy products and services in real sea environments at the project’s network of test centres. This new call will focus on supporting technology developers ready to deploy in 2021 or early 2022. 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.
Funded by Interreg North-West Europe, Ocean DEMO is a €13m project aiming to accelerate ocean energy’s transition from single prototype to multi-device farms by providing free access to world-leading test centres: EMEC (UK), DMEC (NL), SEM REV (FR) and SmartBay (IE).
The 4th Ocean DEMO call for applications is open until 10th September 2021, at 17:00 UTC. Applications will be reviewed regularly, and support packages will be awarded on a first come first served basis. Call documents are available on the Ocean DEMO website.
Building on the many deployments of Ocean DEMO-supported technologies earlier in the year, this 4th call will strengthen the project’s pipeline. Long term real-sea testing is fundamental to achieve Ocean DEMO’s goal of boosting the ocean energy industry towards commercialisation. Maximising the numbers of deployments in 2021 and early 2022 will allow developers to prove the reliability and efficiency of their devices before the end of the project in 2023.
The Ocean DEMO partners are also working on a brochure which will present and promote the ocean energy industry to potential investors. This document will be available publicly for technology developers to use. Feedback from industry actors on their interactions with investors is needed to make this document as impactful as possible. An online survey is available until the end of June to capture the input and experiences of technology developers.
Lisa Fitzpatrick, Project Manager at EMEC and Ocean DEMO Project Leader, said:
“The start of 2021 as been extremely busy for the Ocean DEMO project. We’ve had several large-scale deployments, and a lot of activity in our different test sites over the past few months.
Despite delays in 2020, technology developers are still ready and eager to test their devices and push the sector forwards. This shows the resilience of the ocean energy industry and is very encouraging for the future of the project. With this 4th call, we’re hoping to make the most of the time we have left in the project and get as many machines in the water as we can, as soon as we can.”
