Partners & Funding
Bluespring was responsible for permitting and secured 2,5M€ public funding for the consortium lead by Bluewater Energy Services. In this project, Bluewater partnered with a strong, Dutch consortium with complementary skilss: Bluewater has extensive experience in the design, construction and asset management of floating structures for the oil and gas industry. Tocardo has experience in the commercial operation of robust tidal turbines since 2008. Van Oord is an installation party with extensive track-record with complex installation for oil and gas and offshore wind turbines. Damen Shipyards is a shipbuilder, TKF supplies offshore power cables and Global Maritime Vryhof is a leading developer and supplier of offshore anchoring technology. NIOZ was responsible for the monitoring program. TexelEnergie was responsible for community outreach.
The project was carried out with a grant from the Waddenfonds and the Ministry of Economic Affairs, National schemes EZ-subsidies, Topsector Energy managed by RVO.
BlueTEC Texel Prototype
This first BlueTEC serves as a demonstration platform targeted at remote locations worldwide. It is a first start of further development of higher capacity tidal energy platforms, to be deployed in large farms.
Unique advantages of the BlueTEC System
Designed for remote locations worldwide
Modular and circular
Simple, robust and cost-effective
Local assembly, installation and maintenance without sophisticated equipment
Can power local villages, which can develop local economies
Experience
The platform was successfully installed in the Marsdiep and produced electricity from tidal currents for over 1 year. The main goals was to learn from the installation and operation and investigate environmental effects.
Tocardo subsequently re-installed a larger turbine and moved the device to Orkney for power performance assessment conducted at a test berth of the European Marine Energy Centre. Unfortunately, Tocardo did not succeed at the time to secure a UK feed-in tariff to continue the operations. Also Bluewater had decided to withdraw from the tidal sector, judging that the market was not ready yet for this type of solution. The device was retrieved and transported back to the Netherlands and re-cycled. Also the dedicated test berth at Texel was demobilised by Bluewater. The project was very innovative and therefore received a lot of media attention globally.
Five years later, we see several of the innovative features have been adopted by leading developers, such as bi-directional turbines, 4-point pre-tensioned mooring solutions and lazy-S power cable.
Also the main driver behind the project, Allard van Hoeken, is now leading the team at Oceans of Energy to develop a solution for offshore floating solar.
Read more online
https://www.offshore-energy.biz/bluetec-platform-inaugurated-at-port-of-den-helder/
