The Biscay Marine Energy Platform (bimep) is an open-sea test site developed to demonstrate wave energy devices and conduct further research. Bimep provides wave energy device manufacturers with ready-to-use facilities to validate their designs and to test their technical and economic feasibility.
As bimep approaches to its operational start in 2013, the objective of this paper is to showcase the main results and lessons learnt along its development process as well as to present the future steps towards its exploitation aimed at accelerating the marine renewable energy sector.
The permitting process has helped to improve preliminary designs in order to avoid negative environmental impacts, but most importantly it has contributed to define specific measures in order to achieve an adequate safety level for people, the environment and navigation. Resource characterisation and dynamic grid integration analyses have also resulted in the definition of some important parameters for the design and verification of the devices to be deployed at the site.
Finally, this paper presents key business issues for the future exploitation of bimep.
