European Marine Energy Centre
TA81 – UCC-EMEC-EMEC
Location
The Charles Clouston Building, ORIC, Back Road, Orkney
KW16 3BS Stromness, United Kingdom
Description
EMEC is an innovation catalyst pioneering the transition to a clean energy future.
Based in Orkney, Scotland, EMEC is the world’s leading centre for demonstrating wave and tidal energy converters in the sea. As a plug-and-play facility EMEC helps reduce the time, cost and risk of testing ocean energy and associated low carbon technologies.
EMEC’s clients benefit from a range of ready-made and cost-minimising test and demonstration facilities in major wave and tidal resources. Significant infrastructure investments have been made to make it as easy as possible for technology developers to learn by doing, with full confidentiality of performance data.
EMEC has a number of facilities spread across Orkney for a variety of infrastructure, at different stages of development, to be tested , covering Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 and above. This includes:
- Billia Croo grid-connected wave energy test site, Stromness, Mainland Orkney
- Fall of Warness grid-connected tidal energy test site, off the island of Eday
- Caldale Hydrogen Production Plant, on Eday
- Scapa Flow scale wave test site, off St Mary’s Bay
- Shapinsay Sound scale tidal test site, off Head of Holland
EMEC also leads innovation projects exploring floating wind, renewables integration, green hydrogen, e-fuels and islands decarbonisation.
If you are looking for further information or have a specific request, please do reach out to the team to discuss further:
Lily Wain - Marine Energy Development Coordinator - lily.wain@emec.org.uk
Testing Capabilities
Offshore projects range from wave energy and tidal energy converters, including also floating platforms, subsystems, tools, components and materials. They can also host moorings, cables and connections. Onshore, they welcome from renewables integration projects, storage and logistics, through to green hydrogen, e-fuels and end-use case demonstrations, particularly within the maritime, maritime and aviation sectors.
Technical Equipment
- Grid-connected wave test site
- Grid-connected tidal test site
- Subsea cables feeding into onshore substation with national grid connection
- Datawell Directional Waverider buoys
- ADCPs
- Meteorological stations
- Environmental monitoring
- Scale test sites with pre-laid anchor points
- Test support buoys / microgrid configuration
- Hydrogen production and storage
- SCADA system
- CCTV
- Office facilities
Additional information
Technology Readiness Level: 4-6
Special considerations: Initial feasibility review to be performed to inform bespoke insurance and health and safety requirements. This review needs to be done prior to funding request submission, also for Developers to understand the essential costs that they are responsible for and outside of the coverage of this call. This process involves an introductory meeting, followed by a high-level Request for Information (RFI) about the technology and expected deployment plan and needs, for operations and consenting to discuss and troubleshoot, if needed. A Non-disclosure Agreement (NDA) can be signed at this stage if the developer prefers to. When access is granted, a Berth Agreement that regulates access conditions, insurances, liabilities and responsibilities of both parties need to be signed prior to deployment.
Technology clusters: Energy Storage, Hydrogen, Materials for Energy, Ocean Energy, Offshore Wind
Website: https://www.emec.org.uk/
Availability: All the year
Provision of tools to prepare data sets in a FAIR way: Yes
