Wave energy developer Eco Wave Power has announced it is participating in the ILIAD Consortium, which has been awarded €17 million by the European Union (EU) as part of the €1 billion European Green Deal.
The ILIAD Project, which is comprised of 56 partners from 18 different countries in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, will develop, operate, and demonstrate the ILIAD Digital Twin of the Ocean (DTO).
Among the different participating partners are organizations such as WAVEC- Offshore Renewables, the Technion- Israel Institute of Technology, University of Haifa, University College Cork- National University of Ireland, The University of Edinburgh, Technical University of Varna and others.
The funding will be divided among the parties in accordance with each party’s contribution, and Eco Wave Power will be granted €178,500, with the consortium agreement to be entered in approximately three months.
ILIAD will commercialize an interoperable, data-intensive, and cost-effective DTO, capitalizing the explosion of new data provided by many different earth sources, modern computing infrastructure including Internet of Things, social networking, Big Data, cloud computing and more.
The ILIAD consortium, which has received funding through the EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, will combine high-resolution modelling with real-time sensing of ocean parameters, advanced algorithms for forecasting of spatio-temporal events and pattern recognition. The DTO will consist of several real-time to near-real-time digital replicas of the ocean.
ILIAD will assemble a broad and diverse user community of existing and new users, who will use the project’s innovative technological solutions to address their challenges. Furthermore, ILIAD will create a marketplace to distribute apps, plug-ins, interfaces, raw data, citizen science data, synthesized information and value-adding services in combination with the ILIAD DTO.
ILIAD partners include industrial companies, end users, academic institutions, research and technology developers and private firms.
“Being part of such an ambitious project alongside leading European entities fits well with Eco Wave’s vision of providing smart and cost-efficient technology for turning waves into green electricity,” said Inna Braverman Eco Wave Power’s CEO. “Being part of the ILIAD ecosystem will provide essential information to Eco Wave Power, giving us a competitive advantage and contributing to the Green Deal growth strategy that will transform the EU into a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy.”
Eco Wave Power partnered on drafting the ILIAD proposal with Agora Partners, which initiated and organized the consortium and will manage the three-year project.
“We are excited to have Eco Wave Power on board for the ILIAD project. Winning funding for the ILIAD Project illustrates Agora Partners strong position in managing large, complex and challenging publicly funded projects,” said Simon van Dam, Agora’s CEO. “ILIAD is the largest project we have won so far, bringing the total budget managed by Agora to €118 million in 23 projects.”
