From 18-20 October, the VALID project attended the global ocean energy conference ICOE-OEE, where our consortium hosted a side event together with fellow European wave energy project, IMPACT.
ICOE-OEE was the first conference combining the International Conference on Ocean Energy (ICOE) and Ocean Energy Europe’s (OEE) annual conference. Held in San Sebastián/Donostia, Spain, the event promised “an unparalleled opportunity for the [wave energy] sector to showcase its successes, network and do business.”
Is hybrid testing the key to accelerating wave energy development?
Aquatera Director Gaynor Jones directs questions to panel of presenters
VALID’s main contribution to the conference was its joint side event on Thursday, 20 October, co-organised with Horizon-2020 wave energy project IMPACT.
Entitled “Is hybrid testing the key to accelerating wave energy development?”, the side event provided a general introduction to hybrid testing in the wave energy sector before delving deeper into specific aspects of the two projects. A panel discussion followed, where the audience had the opportunity to engage with presenters. The side event gathered 33 people from different stakeholder groups.
“The first event delivered jointly by the IMPACT and VALID projects turned out to be a great success,” said Natalia Rojas, a senior consultant at Aquatera, VALID’s Exploitation, Knowledge Exchange and Dissemination Work Package Leader (WP7). “IMPACT’s communication and dissemination team worked closely with VALID to organise an event of a high standard that focused on accelerated hybrid testing and shared the progress from both projects.”
As IMPACT answered the same Horizon 2020 call topic as VALID to develop new test rig devices for accelerating ocean energy technology development, hosting a joint side event was a natural collaboration for the two projects, and ICOE-OEE was the ideal platform.
IMPACT's WP8 leader Hans Christian Bolstad introduces the VALID-IMPACT event
“It was great to attend ICOE-OEE and meet so many people working within wave and tidal energy development,” said Hans Christian Bolstad, senior project manager at SINTEF Energy Research and leader of IMPACT’s Project Results Exploitation and Dissemination work package (WP8). “The ICOE-OEE conference combined with our dedicated side event was a great opportunity to discuss and promote the benefits of hybrid testing within wave energy.”
“On behalf of the communication and dissemination team from VALID, we hope to collaborate with and be supported by IMPACT in future initiatives,” Rojas said.
IMPACT (Innovative Methods for wave energy Pathways Acceleration through novel Criteria and Test rigs) is a collaborative research and innovation project involving five European partners that aims to develop and demonstrate a next generation testing approach for Wave Energy Converters (WECs). The proposed 250kW Dual Hardware-in-the-loop (DHIL) testing platform is based on a technology that expands the capabilities of the existing Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) technique. This will be supported by novel testing methodologies, addressing performance, reliability and survivability of WECs.
VALID partners at ICOE-OEE
TECNALIA's Pablo Ruiz-Minguela presents on VALID at ICOE-OEE
In addition to the side event, VALID partners were also involved in other parts of the conference: Yavin Four Consultants (Y4C) authored posters that were displayed throughout the conference, and Pablo Ruiz-Minguela, Head of Wave Energy at TECNALIA, presented ongoing work in the VALID project regarding the practical Implementation of the VALID Hybrid Testing Methodology to increase the reliability of electrical generators in OWC devices.