UK wave and tidal energy developers have been awarded GBP 7 million in funding in order to boost their technology development efforts, and contribute to the development of this renewable energy sector in the UK, InnovateUK announced. More than 35 British businesses and universities have been included in this funding award, allocated through a research and development funding competition.

A total of nine research and development projects are going to focus on two aspects of wave and tidal energy – reduction of costs and improving efficiency of wave and tidal energy conversion devices. Some will improve on existing technologies, while other projects will try to find new ways to harness the energy of ocean waves and tidal currents.

Of the total GBP 7 million, 6.6 million is coming from the Technology Strategy Board, while the remaining 400,000 is coming from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

The companies involved in the nine projects are Aquamarine Power, Aviation Enterprises, AWS Ocean Energy, Fred Olsen, Green-Tide Turbines, Marine Current Turbines, Offshore Wave Energy, Small Hydro Company and Tidal Generation.

The Technology Strategy Board is planning a second competition, this time for GBP 3 million, planned to begin in September this year, and will focus on deployment of pre-commercial full scale devices which will operate in the sea. The goal is to monitor the perfomance of the installed devices, and assess the technologies' ability to operate in real-life ocean conditions, while maintaining reliability and a satisfactory level of maintainance effectiveness. This competition will be mostly aimed at developers who are nearing the phase of full scale deployment of their technologies.

[source: InnovateUK]