DTOceanPlus will accelerate the commercialisation of the Ocean Energy sector by developing and demonstrating an open source suite of design tools for the selection, development, deployment and assessment of ocean energy systems (including sub-systems, energy capture devices and arrays). The suite of tools will include a Structured Innovation tool, for technology concept selection, a Stage Gate tool, for the technology development process, as well as a set of Deployment Design and Assessment tools for the design of the system and its evaluation. This suite of design tools will reduce the technical and financial risks of the technology to achieve the deployment of cost-competitive wave and tidal arrays. DTOceanPlus will underpin a rapid reduction in the Levelised Cost of Energy offered by facilitating improvement in the reliability, performance and survivability of ocean energy systems and analysing the impact of design on energy yield, operations & maintenance and the environment, thus making the sector more attractive for private investment.
These objectives and impacts will be achieved through the implementation of 9 work packages covering user engagement, tool development, demonstration of tools against real projects (thus outputting a suite of tools at TRL 6), analysis of supply chains and potential markets, exploitation, dissemination and education.
WP8 will conduct research related to the ocean energy marketplace and combine this with results generated and lessons learnt during the project in order to produce a freely available, state of the art knowledge base.
Task T8.2 will gather the information gained as part of DTOceanPlus to develop a complete understanding of the supply chain across Europe. This will include inputs from the consortium and potential users of the tools including developers, funders, investors and other groups represented in the project, as well as the experiences from real case studies, which helped to inform the analysis.
The public deliverable D8.2 “Analysis of European Supply Chain” analyses the value chain of ocean energy, regarding its stakeholders, structure, current engagement and breakdown of project costs. It explores the mapping of the opportunities for European companies and encompasses the typical project lifecycle activities, such as project management, supply of ocean energy devices and balance of plant, as well as the installation, commissioning, operations&maintenance, and decommissioning activities.
The similarities between Offshore Wind and Ocean Energy are presented in this report and can be exploited to transfer knowledge and experience. These similarities can be found not only on the technological aspects but also on the installation, operations&maintenance, commissioning and decommissioning. Taking advantage of these potential synergies can help address the challenge related to the cost competitiveness of Ocean Energy technologies as well as encourage third parties to engage with the Ocean Energy sector and enter the value chain.
Cost competitiveness is identified as a major challenge facing the Ocean Energy sector, since the majority of the existing technologies are not yet in a commercial stage and cannot compete with other more mature renewable energy technologies. The detailed assessment of costs is still a difficult task within the sector given the scale and number of deployments to date.
Ocean Energy is bringing unique challenges to marine governance frameworks. Legal and regulatory aspects are frequently regarded as major non-technical challenges to the deployment of ocean energy, as a stable and complete policy framework for the ocean energy sector is currently missing, being currently tailored for more established uses of the sea, such as the oil and gas industry, fishing, and shipping.