EU-SCORES gets official go-ahead for renewable energy multi-use parks

Authorities & Government

April 17, 2023, by Amir Garanovic

The EU-SCORES project, focused on developing energy multi-use parks incorporating different offshore renewable energy sources at one site, has received an official go-ahead from the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA).

The €45 million marine energy project EU-SCORES, short for ‘European Scalable Offshore Renewable Energy Sources’, is now one step closer to realizing bankable multi-source offshore energy parks across Europe.

Namely, the project secured an official approval from CINEA, meaning the green light has been given for both demonstrations of wave energy developer CorPower Ocean and offshore floating solar company Oceans of Energy at the respective test sites WavEC – Offshore Renewables and POM West-Vlaanderen Blue Accelerator.

CorPower Ocean will develop a 1.2MW wave energy array co-located with a floating wind farm in Portugal, while Oceans of Energy will demonstrate a 3MW offshore solar system co-located with a bottom fixed windfarm off the Belgian coast.

The approval was granted as EU-SCORES obtained all necessary permits relating to the installation and operation, full-scale design of the demonstration – including the offshore grid, operation and maintenance procedures, safety requirements, and mechanical designs of the floater, anchor and mooring – as well as the pathway to achieve the financial closure for the project and beyond.

Under the lead of Dutch Marine Energy Centre (DMEC), the EU-SCORES project kicked off in September 2021.

The multi-source demonstrations in EU-SCORES aim to showcase the benefits of continuous and more consistent power output enabled through harnessing complementary power sources including wind, sun and waves.

This hybrid approach is expected to create a more resilient and stable power system, higher capacity factors and a lower total cost per MWh of power output.

These aspects will also improve the business case for green hydrogen production, by allowing electrolysers to run at higher utilization.

Aside from DMEC, the EU-SCORES consortium partners include Oceans of Energy, TU Delft, SBM Offshore, POM West-Vlaanderen (POM), RWE Renewables (RWE), CorPower Ocean, Uppsala University, Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (LUT), Enel Green Power, RINA Offshore Consultants, INNOSEA – a AqualisBraemar LOC Group company, EDP Labelec, WavEC Offshore Renewables, INESC TEC, Exceedence, and Western Star Wave – a Simply Blue Group company.