Dr Dave Parish and Professor Trevor Whittaker 

OPERA consortium receives Yoshio Masuda prize

The H2020 OPERA project has received the Yoshio Masuda prize for its contribution to the 12^th European Wave and Tidal Conference, held from the 27 August to 1 September in Cork, Ireland.

The OPERA consortium presented multiple conference publications about progress in the development of a full-scale wave energy device, currently demonstrated at the BIMEP test site in the north of Spain.

The work presented was devoted to the design and field data collection studies (including environmental conditions, device motions and mooring tensions) for the floating oscillating water column wave energy converter ‘Marmok-A-5’ developed by Oceantec Energías Marinas.

OPERA is an international project consortium, coordinated by TECNALIA, comprising 12 academic and industrial partners.

The project aims to develop and de-risk technologies that will reduce the cost of operating wave energy devices at sea by 50% and subsequently accelerate the roll-out of marine renewable energy.

Dr Dave Parish of the University of Exeter team, led by Professor Lars Johanning, accepted the prize on behalf of the OPERA team.

The researchers from the University of Exeter led two publications on this specific topic with a focus on the design and evaluation of novel elastometric mooring tethers developed within the Exeter team, and the analysis of the ‘Karratu’ mooring system to assess cost and engineering challenges for marine renewable energy moorings.

The 12^th EWTEC was focused on the commercialisation of the marine energy sector, with over 500 delegates presenting over 70 scientific presentations over four days.

Professor Tony Lewis, lead organiser, said: "Creating jobs, providing clean energy, protecting our environment and harnessing the blue economy are all reasons why ocean energy is important for Ireland and globally".

Date: 5 September 2017