The Open-Sea Operating Experience to Reduce Wave Energy Cost (OPERA) project aims to deliver open access, high-quality open-sea operating data to the wave energy development community, in an effort to address the fact that the limited operating data and experience that currently exists is rarely shared, since it is often partly private-sponsored.
Europe is currently the world leader in wave energy, with significant opportunities for green jobs associated with the development and deployment of wave energy technology. However, wave energy costs remain high compared to conventional forms of energy and there has been very limited open-sea experience to fully understand the challenges in device performance, survivability and reliability. It is this gap that the OPERA project aims to address.
OPERA will facilitate the generation of operating data and open-sea experience for wave energy projects by collecting, analysing and sharing open access, open-sea operating data from projects such as OCEANTEC floating Oscillating Water Column (OWC), among others. This will both reduce the risks and costs that hamper investment in wave energy projects, opening the way to long-term cost reduction of over 50%, and reduce the time-to-market for wave energy technologies.
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