The Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (PLOCAN) is a consortium to support R&D in the fields of ocean science and technology and specially to help companies to test and demonstrate technical and environmental viability of prototypes. PLOCAN provides an operative test site, available nearly throughout the year, on the east Gran Canaria coast (40km2) and near Las Palmas port. PLOCAN will soon be constructing an underwater electrical and communication grid connection. Its conceptual design is composed by medium voltage cables and 15MW. It will comprise underwater hybrid connectors allowing devices assembling to the grid, submarine cables running from the test infrastructure to shore, a power distribution system that will allow the evacuation of the total electricity generated offshore and electrical equipments installed in a substation on land. Due to the wide range of marine energy converters and with the aim to focus initially the testing activities on wave and offshore wind floating devices, the electrical architecture will be divided into two deployment areas: one supplying deep waters required by floating devices (>100m) and another one for shallow waters (40m) required by wave energy devices that generate electricity at a lower capacity. The construction tendering will start in 2012 and the cables are expected to operate by 2014.
