Blue-GIFT: 1st Call for Ocean Energy Demos

The €2.5 million Blue-GIFT (Blue Growth and Innovation Fast Tracked) project has announced the 1st call for applications.

Funded by Interreg Atlantic Area, the Blue-GIFT project is a coordinated ocean energy technology demonstration programme encouraging longer-term demonstration and technology de-risking across the Atlantic Area regions.

The 1st call offers support package vouchers to ocean energy companies for access to demonstration sites across the Atlantic Area, lowering costs for testing and validating technologies in real sea environments.

The project aims to support a minimum of eight floating wind, wave or tidal demonstration related projects across the Atlantic Area region.

A series of test site access vouchers will be offered to successful applicants to support testing of devices and subsystems at the following test centres:

BiMEP (wave and floating wind) in the Basque Country, Spain;
PLOCAN (wave and floating wind) in Gran Canaria, Spain;
SEENEOH (hydrokinetic and tidal) in Bordeaux, France;
WavEC (wave and floating wind test centre) in Aguçadoura, Portugal.

Whilst not eligible for applications within the Blue-GIFT programme, the project consortium also includes three additional ocean energy test facilities who will support the project with technical expertise gained from running the Interreg North-West Europe FORESEA programme:

EMEC (wave and tidal) in Orkney, UK (Blue-GIFT lead partner);
SmartBay Ireland (wave and floating wind) from Galway, Ireland;
Centrale Nantes / SEM-REV (wave and floating wind) in Nantes, France.

The call will close on the 6th September 2019.