Marine energy developer Minesto has been awarded s SEK 5.8 million grant from the Swedish Energy Agency to help facilitate the ongoing commercialisation of its Deep Green technology.
The grant will be used to co-fund a project through which Minesto will develop and verify a next generation tether system to facilitate the commercial scale-up of the company’s marine energy technology. The tether system connects Minesto’s marine energy power plants with the seabed foundation and is composed of the tether rope and cables for communication and power. It is a unique subsystem of Minesto’s Deep Green technology with great impact on the levelised cost of energy, said the company.
“We know there is significant potential to enhance the tether system’s functionality and performance and reduce its complexity. This is related to areas such as hydrodynamic properties, dynamic loads, and electricity transmission with low losses,” said Bernt Erik Westre, CTO at Minesto.
The project aims to develop a next generation tether system that will optimise functionality and performance and allow for future scale-up of power plants to 3 MW and beyond with a serial production design. As a core part of the Deep Green technology, further development of the tether system will also provide Minesto with opportunities to extend its IP protection through new patents.
“This initiative is an integral part to scale up both the size of individual power plants and production volumes in numbers,” explained Dr Martin Edlund, CEO of Minesto. “There are great synergies with our existing projects and the ongoing procurement and manufacturing of the new Dragon Class power plants.”
“Tidal power is expected to be part of the future electricity mix and can contribute to the energy transition in many countries,” added Pierre-Jean Rigole at the Swedish Energy Agency. “It is a predictable energy resource that can reduce the need for energy storage for other forms of renewable energy. Minesto and other Swedish marine energy technology developers are leaders in the field, which makes it an industry with export potential for Sweden.”
