EuCIA joins partners Orbital Marine Power, Marasoft, TECNALIA, University of Edinburgh, EMEC, ENGIE Laborelec and TechnipFMC in the EU Horizon Europe project MAXblade (Maximising tidal energy generation through Blade Scaling and Advanced Digital Engineering), which aims to drive down tidal energy costs. The project website has now launched.
Optimisation is key to enable the tidal sector to make significant contributions towards Europe’s energy systems, energy security and industrial development by 2030, and beyond to 2050. The single, biggest innovation the project seeks to deliver is an increase in rotor diameter from 20 m to 26 m. This will increase the area the blade can sweep by 70%, hugely improving tidal energy efficiencies.
The project has six objectives:
- Deliver reliable, cost optimised and customisable 26 m tidal turbine rotor to maximise project yield;
- Develop and implement advanced tidal blade structural condition monitoring to increase turbine availability;
- Deliver reliable control inputs and optimal blade/controller designs to maximise array level power performance;
- Enable circularity in tidal turbine blades including recyclable thermoplastic manufacturing;
- Secure European leadership of tidal turbine composite blade manufacturing with competitive 320 tidal blade per annum capacity by 2030;
- Advance integrated digital maintenance management of tidal arrays.
A suite of MAXBlade innovation projects will generate essential data across the entire life cycle of the tidal blades. The eight consortium partners will collectively research blade reliability, scale and recyclability, condition monitoring, control, integrated maintenance management, and knowledge capture methods. Combined, these innovations seek to drive down tidal energy costs for volume manufacturing.
EuCIA’s role will include stakeholder engagement to support development of roadmap initiatives toward industrial competitiveness and circular economy objectives, and providing support for communications and dissemination activities and exploitation plan development.
Further information here
