Offshore wind is growing quickly in European shallow seas and prototype floaters for deep waters are being introduced. However, offshore renewable energy is much more than wind: the world’s oceans also offer abundant wave and tidal current energy resources. MARINA Platform is a large European R&D project on multi-purpose offshore renewable energy platforms that runs from 2010 through 2014. With partners from research, industry and SME’s, the project features a deep integration of the work. The project establishes equitable and transparent criteria for evaluating combined concepts, maps combined offshore energy resources, and produces system design and optimisation tools. Cost aspects, components, grid issues and other relevant aspects of multi-purpose energy platforms are addressed.
MARINA Platform passed its mid-term mark in Spring 2012 and the present paper tries to give an overview of its progress. (3 other contributions at ICOE-2012 describe specific findings.) The work completed is summarised, and an overview of new results in the pipeline is given – including site and resource assessment, concept evaluation criteria and tools, engineering tasks, economics, risk assessment and the way to grid integration of future combined offshore energy farms. The paper highlights the way of collaborative creativity MARINA has developed, and how the integration of work between industry, SME and research partners is bearing fruit.
