By Renewable Energy Focus staff
The tidal stream project will be commissioned in two phases.
The first will require organisations to identify specific technical opportunities for reducing the cost of energy of tidal stream arrays and the second will be the development and demonstration of the best opportunities as part of a tidal stream array demonstration.
It is expected that there will be opportunities for cost reduction throughout the array system, but novel support structures such as foundation design, innovative power take off (PTO) systems, and subsea infrastructure and network connection are the primary areas of interest, the ETI says.
The innovations will be applied to create low through-life cost, commercial-scale, horizontal-axis axial-flow tidal stream arrays.
The ETI says it is looking for teams that have a broad range of skills in TEC device and array design, offshore engineering and deployment, offshore electrical systems and major engineering supply chain groups.