Scotland - based tidal energy leader Nova Innovation announced July 6 that it had won a major new European tidal energy project, heading a consortium of nine leading industrial, academic and research organizations from across Europe.
The Enabling Future Arrays in Tidal (EnFAIT) project builds on Nova’s existing operational tidal power station in Bluemull Sound off the Shetland Islands in Scotland, which was the world’ s first grid-connected offshore array of tidal energy turbines. The project, which begins in July 2017 and will run until June 2022, has been won as a competitive contract awarded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme to develop marine energy sources and demonstrate technologies in European waters.
The project is a flagship initiative for the EU and marine energy, and aims to increase the commercial viability of tidal power. It will extend the Bluemull Sound array to six turbines and demonstrate that high array reliability and availability can be achieved using best practice maintenance regimes. The layout of the turbines will be adjusted to enable array interactions and optimization to be studied for the very first time at an operational tidal energy site.
Total project costs are expected to be €20.2 million, to which the EU Horizon 2020 Programme will be contributing €14.9 million.