Irish company DesignPro Renewables has concluded its hydrokinetic turbine pilot programme at SEENEOH test site in France.
The project started over three and a half years ago at SEENEOH test site on the Garonne River in Bordeaux.
The testing of the 25kW hydrokinetic turbine at the site has initially been made possible by the Horizon 2020 funding, after which the project hit a new milestone in September 2019, when the company secured support through the Blue-GIFT program.
This allowed the testing programme to continue for additional 12 months, according to DesignPro.
The testing phase examined factors like durability, wear and tear, environmental impacts, and certification of power curve generation.
Also, the additional testing period allowed DesignPro to implement upgrades and improvements to the unit, including an innovative Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) system developed in conjunction with Mitsubishi Electric Ireland that delivered significantly improved performance, the company said.
Paul Collins , Managing Director at DesignPro Renewables, said: “DesignPro Renewables pilot programme proves that through successful partnerships and collaboration with industry leaders such as SEENOH, Leask, Mitsubishi we can make clean predictable energy accessible and realize the potential of rivers and estuaries.
“Our thanks as always to the H2020 and the Blue-GIFT Programme for supporting breakthrough innovation projects with market creating potential. For 2021, we intend to harness the positive and renew the negative – continuing our strategy to positively evolve by building on invaluable tested learnings”.
Marlène Kiersnowski , Test Site Manager at SEENEOH, said. “The DP25 demonstrator test campaign was extremely dense in terms of the knowledge acquired for both DesignPro and SEENEOH, which notably designed and manufactured the platform and anchoring system.
“The Garonne is a difficult environment that the teams were able to grasp in order to extract a maximum amount of information on the durability of the equipment and its operational functioning. The Franco-Irish collaboration was very fruitful and the exchanges between the two teams were always very much appreciated”.