€4.5m wave energy test platform to enhance Ireland’s leading status

IRELAND’S reputation as a leader in wave energy technology is being enhanced by a €4.5 million research investment on a test platform being set up in Galway Bay this weekend.

The 30-tonne platform of Cobh-based Ocean Energy Ltd is hosting test components developed by Irish and European researchers through a project funded by EU Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn. It was craned into the water on Galway’s docks yesterday and is being towed this morning to the Marine Institute Galway Bay test site a kilometre south of Spiddal, where trials will take place over the next three months.

The project is being co-ordinated by University College Cork’s Hydraulics and Maritime Research Centre (HMRC), which has overseen the installation of its own technologies and others by partner research groups from universities and industry here and from Portugal, UK, Spain, Germany, Denmark and Italy.