Dutch Equinox Ocean Turbines (EQOT) is about to start open-water testing of its ocean current platform to gather data required for de-risking and advancing the technology toward commercial deployment.
The open-water testing of the Mobula 5 1:10 prototype will begin in Friesland, the Netherlands, on July 11-16, with the campaign expected to advance the technology to technology readiness level (TRL) 6, demonstrating system performance in real-world ocean conditions and validating key assumptions required for commercial-scale deployment.
The data collected will support the half-scale product demonstrator, targeted for 2028.
“Beginning open-water testing of Mobula 5 is a defining milestone for EQOT,” said Pieter de Haas , CEO and CTO at EQOT. “Years of engineering, modelling, and development are now being validated in real ocean conditions. The results will provide critical data to support the next phase of development and accelerate our pathway toward commercial deployment.”
The program is designed to validate the operational and technical requirements, including operational behavior and full turbine controllability, energy production capability in line with predictions, generating power curves and production statistics that validate the technology claims, and hybrid simulation, connecting EQOT’s OpenFAST simulation program directly to the turbine’s control system, advancing testing capabilities beyond conventional approaches.
Furthermore, EQOT revealed that following initial validation, it was preparing the foundations for both demonstration-scale projects and future utility-scale deployments in the Florida and Kuroshio currents, two of the world’s most powerful ocean current resources, through collaborations focused on environmental assessment, permitting, and project development.