Energy research centre to make waves

BUILDING work on a €16 million national maritime and energy research centre is to begin in Cork within months.

The agencies involved in the Maritime and Energy Research Centre (MERC) said it will help scale-up Ireland’s renewable energy sector and attract international device developers from all over the world to work here.

The world-class facility, which is being developed under a partnership involving Cork Institute of Technology’s National Maritime College of Ireland (NMCI), University College Cork (UCC) and the Irish Naval Service, will be built next to the NMCI campus in Ringaskiddy.

Up to 130 researchers will be based at the centre, which it is hoped will be open in early 2013.

It will include a National Ocean Energy Test Tank, a massive testing tank where wave and wind-energy device manufacturers can test scale-models. The tank will form a crucial part of the country’s “test-bed infrastructure” for such devices.

Device manufactures have to go through a rigorous testing process before manufacturing full-scale machines.

A small test tank in a warehouse on Pouladuff Road in Cork is considered by experts to be too small to foster growth in the industry.

MERC’s tank will be one of the best in the world.

Companies will first test their devices in the MERC tank, before moving to Phase 2, the quarter-scale test facility in Galway Bay. The final phase will see the devices being tested in an extreme environment, off Belmullet in Co Mayo, before companies can move to full production.

MERC director Valerie Cummins briefed engineers on the progress of the project at a conference in Cork.

She said MERC will bring researchers and engineers together in a “flagship cluster” of excellence that will work with leading Irish companies and with the IDA and Enterprise Ireland to attract significant foreign direct investment.

Following the securing of major Government funding earlier this year, and further funding from Bord Gáis and the Glucksman Foundation, a design team has been identified and it is hoped that contracts will be signed in the coming weeks.

It is expected building work will begin soon, possibly early next year.

Ms Cummins said that, while the research centre is eagerly awaited, collaboration is already under way between the various agencies involved.

Dr Tony Lewis, who heads up UCC’s Hydraulics and Maritime Research Centre (HMRC), is considered one of the country’s foremost experts in the field and will be among the lead researchers at MERC.

HMRC, which was established in 1979, is a centre of excellence for research into ocean renewables and coastal engineering. Its staff have a range of engineering, environmental, electrical and electronic, mechanical, aeronautical and oceanographic expertise. The centre houses the only facilities for wave simulation in Ireland, with a wave flume and an ocean wave basin.