On the same day Scottish government informed on awarding GBP 2 million of funding to support innovation in offshore wind, the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult, one of the three awardees , announced a GBP 1.3 million programme of technology innovation projects designed to advance Scotland’s offshore wind sector.
The programme is financed with GBP 445,000 from the government, a further GBP 150,000 from industry partners Fergusons Marine Engineering, CWind and WOOD, and match funding from ORE Catapult.
The funds will support four projects focused on next generation crew transfer and service vessels, a technology accelerator programme, investigating alternative communication and remote supervisory systems, and establishing a ‘Fit for Offshore’ business excellence programme to enable the Scottish supply chain to access offshore wind commercial opportunities.
The four projects are designed to link the Scottish supply chain and academia directly with technology and innovation opportunities in offshore wind, according to ORE Catapult.
Chris Hill , ORE Catapult’s Operational Performance Director, said: “Through these four projects, our team of innovation experts and engineers will work across industry and academia to accelerate commercial technology deployment, de-risk and encourage innovation, develop joint industry projects to address common sector challenges, and work to encourage the cross transfer of technologies from other sectors.”
“We’ll leverage our existing collaborations with leading industry players such as Vattenfall, Equinor, SSE, EDF Energy and ScottishPower Renewables to provide technical input, commercialisation support and access to Scottish offshore wind demonstration sites,” Hill said.