UK government set to invest in tidal-energy demonstration

According to a statement, ’Marine Energy — Supporting Array Technologies’ is a competition for collaborative R&D funding that will support the applied research, experimental development and demonstration of technologies that solve common issues faced by those developing and deploying the first marine-energy arrays.

The funding — from the Technology Strategy Board, Scottish Enterprise and the Natural Environment Research Council — will support the successful deployment and operation of the first series of wave and tidal arrays while complementing other public-funding initiatives such as the Department for Energy and Climate Change’s (DECC’s) Marine Energy Array Deployment capital grant scheme, the Energy Technologies Institute’s (ETI’s) wave and tidal-energy system demonstrator programmes and the Scottish government’s Saltire Prize.

The competition will seek proposals for research-and-development projects that address areas including tidal-array cabling; subsea electrical hubs; installation and maintenance vessels for tidal arrays; navigation and collision avoidance, and anti-fouling and corrosion.

The results of this competition are expected to help UK businesses to build sustainable economic growth by exploiting innovative technologies in a growing market and by removing barriers to successful array deployment.