Surewave project consortium tests offshore floating solar model

Business Developments & Projects

November 23, 2023, by Amir Garanovic

The consortium of the EU-funded Surewave project has performed wave tank tests of the floating solar concept at the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN).

The Surewave floating solar concept at MARIN (Courtesy of the Surewave project)

The Surewave consortium – comprising SINTEF, MARIN, Ceit Research Center, Sunlit Sea, ACCIONA, IFEU – Institut für Energie und Umweltforschung Heidelberg, and Clement Germany – gathered at MARIN for a crucial 12-month status meeting earlier in November.

One of the major highlights of the gathering was the wave tank experiments of the Surewave floating solar concept – an external floating breakwater to protect the internal floating photovoltaic (FPV) system against extreme marine environments.

These experiments, conducted by MARIN, featured a 1:10 scale model of both the floating breakwater and internal FPV. The results from these experiments will play a key role in validating our concept and the numerical tools we’ve developed, according to the consortium.

“These experiments are needed to ensure that our design and models accurately represent the real-life behavior of FPV. Having all consortium members was crucial for the collective observation and interpretation of the experiment results.

“The consortium members would like to thank Joep van der Zanden and Tim Bunnik from MARIN for their outstanding efforts in hosting the meeting and the wave tank experiments,” Surewave project developers said.

Surewave aims to solve the main challenges of offshore FPV by developing a solution adapted to the most critical sea states, being able to mitigate the harsh conditions for the FPV.

The project aims to help establish FPV as a well-tested and established renewable energy technology – to diversify the technology portfolio and to take maximum advantage of the vast potential offered by EU’s seas to become climate neutral by 2050.

The main objective of Surewave is to develop and test an innovative concept of a floating FPV system consisting of an external floating breakwater structure made of new circular materials acting as protection against severe wave loads on the FPV structure itself, allowing increased operational availability and energy output.