Weekly Intelligence Brief

Acciona heads multidisciplinary pan European consortium

26 February 2010

Energy major Acciona is heading a European R&D consortium of 17 companies, universities and technology centres from 12 countries to establish a technological basis to ensure the viable and competitive integration of marine renewable energies.

The project, named MARINA Platform (Marine Renewable Integrated Application Platform), will establish the integration of marine renewable energies such as wind, wave, tidal and ocean currents on a single deepwater production platform with a total budget of €12.8 million. The project is co-financed by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme (7FP) for Research with a subsidy of €8.7 million.

The project is expected to be complete by June 2014 and will analyse the integration of offshore wind power with other marine renewable technologies (wave and currents) on platforms located in deep water (i.e. above 40 meters) several miles off the coast. This will mean that the useable renewable energy capacity in the sea will increase considerably and, at the same time, synergies will be generated among the different technologies to lower costs and help them to become  economically viable.

The consortium includes Dong Energy, Norway’s Statoil, Technip, Progeco, Corrosion & Water Control, Bureau Veritas Nederland and 1-Tech.

The industrial members are matched by its six academic centres: NTNU (Norway), the University of Edinburgh, University College Cork (Ireland), the École Central de Nantes (France), the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece), and the University do Algarve (Portugal).