Interreg North West Europe - ITEG

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ITEG or ‘Integrating Tidal Energy into the European Grid’ is an Interreg North-West Europe funded project aiming to reduce energy-related carbon emissions. It will develop an all-in-one solution that includes clean predictable energy generation (tidal energy), safe export to the grid and the storage and delivery of the excess capacity in hydrogen. Furthermore, ITEG will develop horizontal axis tidal energy technologies (currently not yet commercially exploited in the marine environment. The project combines 9 project partners in total,  from knowledge institutions (including Ghent University) to technology developers, test centers and regional development agencies. The project is led by EMEC, the European Marine Energy Centre, and will run from September 2017 until December 2020.

The cost of pre-commercial demonstration for Ocean Energy is high and investors are reluctant to invest until the technology has been proven in the sea at scale. This project will drive down these costs (which is the main factor limiting its uptake) through the development of an integrated solution.

Construction of a 2MW horizontal axis tidal converter and deployment of an integrated hydrogen production solution are the main investments envisaged through the ITEG project. Following a thorough demonstration period business plans will be developed for the construction of one more turbine (expanding the farm nominal power to 4MW) to be deployed at the EMEC site. In addition to this the project partners will develop opportunities for commercial projects across the North-West Europe region and globally with a target of 3 to 5 new farms with a total of 100MW installed per year in a ten years’ time. These developments will lead to benefits in line with INTERREG Programme Specific Objective 3: jobs maintained (>1500 jobs), increased capacity of renewable energy production (plus 350GWh/year) and a reduction in GHG emissions (less 300,000 tons/year) which is vital to address global warming.

 

Objectives

The main objective:

  • ITEG will focus on developing a carbon-free, all-in-one solution for energy generation in poorly connected and remote areas. This all-in-one solution is made of a floating horizontal-axis tidal turbine, suitable to shallow waters, an electrolyser to produce hydrogen and an energy management system: The ITEG project aims at optimizing this system and deploy it in one location before spreading in other places of NWE and worldwide.

Sub-objectives:

  • Deploying the tidal turbine, electrolyser and EMS
  • Optimizing the all-in-one energy generation and storage system
  • De-risking and promoting the all-in-one energy generation and storage system


Role of Ghent University

Power-Link, as part of Ghent University, will contribute to the simulation, testing and optimization of the energy management system and to a social acceptance study for decentralised energy projects. They will also have a role in communication and dissemination by among which publishing articles and presenting at conferences.


Website

http://www.nweurope.eu/projects/project-search/iteg-integrating-tidal-energy-into-the-european-grid


Contact

Prof. Lieven Vandevelde
Department of Electrical Energy, Metals, Mechanical Constructions and Systems
09 264 34 22