Basques open €500,000 marine renewables demo call

The Basque energy agency Ente Vasco de la Energía (EVE) has launched a call for marine renewable energy demonstration projects that will be funded under the state aid program for renewable energy development.

Ocaentec Marmok-A5 device under trials at BiMEP test site (Photo: EVE)

The priority goal of EVE’s €2.5 million aid program, running from 2018-2020, is to promote projects for the demonstration and validation of emerging marine renewable energy technologies within the autonomous community of the Basque Country.

The funding allocated for 2018 has been set to €500,000 that will be awarded to companies as nonrefundable experimental development R&D subsidies, while the remaining €2 million will be invested over the next two years.

Under the call – set to close when the budget allocated has been exhausted, or on October 31, 2018, regardless of the budget availability – pilot testing at the demonstration and validation phase of full-scale, or almost full-scale, prototypes of both wave energy converters, and floating platforms for wind turbines will be supported.

Also, projects looking to test offshore wind turbines at the same development stages will also be financed, as well as the demonstration and validation auxiliary equipment or component prototypes for marine renewable energy devices.

All actions funded under the call will have to be carried out in infrastructure for testing emerging marine renewable energy devices in the open sea and within the Basque Country, EVE noted.

Projects may be submitted as an individual proposal, or as a collaborative proposal, taken forward together by various companies and organizations.

Each test project must be submitted with a commitment of acceptance from the testing infrastructure where the prototype is going to be tested, or at least with a letter of endorsement for the project from the testing center supporting the submission, according to EVE.

The General Management of EVE will take the final decision and inform those concerned within a maximum of six months from the date on which the application for aid was submitted.

Once this period has expired, if no notification has been received, all interested parties may consider their applications accepted, EVE said.

The Basque government first created its own energy agency EVE to lay the foundations for an energy policy that has been grounded, to different degrees at different stages, on energy efficiency, diversification of energy sources and promotion of renewables.

Since then, EVE has been in charge of developing projects and initiatives in line with government policies.