MARINA Platform

MArine Renewable INtegrated Application Platform
Collaborative Project. 7th Framework Programme
Grant agreement number: 241402
54 months - January 2010 to June 2014
17 partners from 12 different countries
Total budget: 12.761.220€ // Total EC contribution: 8.708.660€

Objective

The objective of the MARINA Platform project is to establish a set of equitable and transparent criteria for the evaluation of multi-purpose platforms for marine renewable energy (MRE) all focussed on system integration and reducing costs. One way of reducing costs is to exploit synergies with other technologies. One effective choice is to combine offshore wind with other Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) technologies; primarily wave energy, but also ocean and/or tidal currents at sites where these resources are concentrated. If costs can be reduced to a competitive level, the potential for wind farms in deeper waters is huge. These will be brought to the level of preliminary engineering designs with estimates for energy output, material sizes and weights, platform dimensions, component specifications and other relevant factors. This will allow the resultant new multi-purpose MRE platform designs, validated by advanced modelling and tank-testing at reduced scale, to be taken to the next stage of development, which is the construction of pilot scale platforms for testing at sea. Recognising the complexity of the challenge, and the significant development risks, MARINA is primarily a research project focused on the longer-term benefits and synergies of integrating deep-water wind and ocean energy. However, its progress will be greatly assisted by the ambition of industrial.

Partners

Description of work

MARINA Platform project activities are organized in 9 work packages, including project management and dissemination activities.

Work package 1: Overall methodology and management
Objective: to establish an overall methodology in order to manage the communication and data flow between partners and work packages, and to assess the progress towards the objectives of the project and towards results.

Work package 2: Site Assessment and Monitoring
Objective: to establish criteria for identifying suitable sites for the deployment of deep offshore renewable energy platforms, and use these criteria at suitable test locations determine the design criteria for deep offshore multi-purpose platforms.

Work package 3: Concepts Identification
Objective: to establish criteria for the viability of concepts that integrate conversion of wind and wave/current energy and apply these in the identification of novel concepts, as well as to develop and assess novel concepts of wave and wind energy converters.

Work package 4: Synthesis - modelling and testing
Objective: to develop methodologies for dynamic analysis of integrated wind/wave and wind/current energy conversion systems, including structure and energy conversion, as well as develop and validate tools for dynamic analysis and assess the performance of novel concepts identified under WP3.

Work package 5: Technology Risk Assessment methodology
Objective: to develop/review risk analysis methods and apply them in assessing risks associated with installation, operation, including survivability of wind and ocean energy facilities.

Work package 7: Critical Component Engineering
Objective: to identify the critical components for marine renewable integrated platforms and to determine activities to engineer new or improved systems, as well as to develop risk assessment methodologies for critical components to feed into WP5.

Work package 8: Grid connection and macro-system integration
Objective: to lead to feasible solutions for transmission systems delivering power from combined marine systems far from land to the onshore electrical grid.

Work package 9: Exploitation and Dissemination
Objective: to set-up communication systems through which MARINA results will be managed. The dissemination activities will be mainly targeted to technology developers, end-users and regulators and they will be coordinated with other national and international initiatives.

Project coordinator

ACCIONA ENERGIA S.A.
Contact person: Raul Manzanas