ONDEP project wins €19M EU funding to deploy wave energy array offshore Portugal

The Ondas de Peniche (ONDEP) project has secured €19 million in funding from the EU’s Horizon Europe funding program to deploy a 2 MW wave energy array with four WaveRoller wave energy converters offshore Portugal.

The ONDEP project will start in October 2024 and run for five and a half years, covering design, manufacturing, testing, deployment, and operation. 

Located in Peniche, Portugal, the pilot wave farm will be installed, connected to the grid, and will generate electricity for eight years after the project’s conclusion, said Ocean Energy Europe (OEE).

“This project builds on two decades of hard work developing WaveRoller into a commercial asset. We’re excited to work on this collaboration together with the other partners to create a new industry in Europe,” said Christoper Ridgewell, CEO of AW-Energy, the technology provider for ONDEP.

ONDEP said it will focus over the next five and a half years on addressing the technical challenges for future large-scale wave farms, ensuring reliability and scalability. The project aims to build a comprehensive end-to-end European supply chain to support the deployment of GW-scale wave energy across Europe and beyond.

“Wave energy is the largest untapped renewable energy resource in the world. The ONDEP project is poised to be among the first pilot wave farms globally, advancing this new industry to an industrial level. It will pave the way towards a zero-carbon future,” added Rémi Gruet, CEO of OEE.

Led by Queen’s University Belfast, ONDEP involves 14 partners from Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and the UK, covering the entire wave energy value chain.

“Queen’s University Belfast is a centre of excellence for renewable energy, coastal engineering and wave energy technology. As well as coordination we’re looking forward to valuable research that we’re confident will benefit the entire industry,” said Pal Schmitt, Lecturer at the School of Natural and Built Environment. 

By 2030, ONDEP aims to establish 11 wave energy farms in eight countries across four continents, totaling 83 MW of capacity. By 2035, the goal is to achieve a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of less than €100/MWh, contributing to a sustainable blue economy and potentially creating up to 500,000 jobs in Europe, said OEE.

The ONDEP project is described as “one of the first pilot wave farm projects in Europe” focused on advancing wave energy technology and speeding up commercial deployment. The project aims to harness wave energy’s potential to support Europe’s shift to a low-carbon future.

The WaveRoller device consists of a single movable panel and a PTO system, submerged on a foundation.

The back-and-forth movement of water driven by wave surge puts the WaveRoller panel into motion. As the WaveRoller panel moves and absorbs the energy from ocean waves, hydraulic piston pumps attached to the panel pump hydraulic fluids inside a closed hydraulic circuit.

The high-pressure fluids are fed into a power storage and smoothing system, which connects to a hydraulic motor that drives an electricity generator to produce power.

Deployed in October 2019 in Portugal, WaveRoller underwent extended sea trials which served for fine-tuning the device’s control system to maximize the performance and yield.

The wave energy device completed an environmental monitoring campaign in December 2020 as part of the WESE project off the coast of Portugal.

In August 2021, Finnish wave energy company AW-Energy refloated the first commercially-ready WaveRoller wave energy device after two years of constant operation on the seabed offshore Portugal.

In terms of the most recent news regarding WaveRoller, in March, AW-Energy finished the three-year WaveFarm project founded by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund through the Blue Economy Window.