Watch the video impression of my tour of the BiMEP open water test site for offshore renewable energy solutions. The test site is a short and fun boat ride from the old fishing port of Armintza, in Northern Spain.
It has water depths up to 90m, an annual average wave energy density of 13kW/m, and 4 test zones each equipped with 5MW grid connections and data collection buoys. The site is ideal for testing wave energy converters and floating wind turbines. Saitec is about to deploy the DemoSATH project at BiMEP , Spain’s first floating wind turbine. Tecnalia is operating the HarshLab buoy in one of the test zones. It is a floating laboratory for the experimentation of materials, components, and equipment in the harsh offshore environment.
This trip was made possible thanks to the Internationals WaTERS network that connects open water test sites around the world. Bluespring was participating for the fourth time this year. This year, I introduced the Dutch Offshore Test Site to the network, an initiative of Campus@Sea, operated by North Sea Farmers.
I shared our experiences on implementing IEC technical specifications in the ENCORE project. Together with Gabriel Alsenas (treasurer at IECRE and working for the Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center, Florida) we explained how test sites can each take a leading role in developing test and certification services and support marine energy convertors in their route to the market. We called upon the test centers to identify a core competency around a technical specification (e.g. wave power assessment, loads measurements, acoustic measurements, etc) and develop a strategic plan to obtain "Acceptance" (another word for accreditation in the IEC system) to issue Test Reports under the IECRE system for that competency.