Innosea supports ocean energy expansion with digital marine data toolbox

The digital toolbox – ResourceCODE – was created with the primary purpose of opening up for developers, a wide scope of simple to use and freely available marine datasets, which enable improved engineering designs, optimised operations in demanding marine environments, and reduced barriers to growth of wave and tidal energy technologies. Ultimately the toolbox supports investment, expansion and the validation of ocean energy projects in the region.

Though developed with wave and tidal energy in mind, the tool is also applicable and configurable to support the modelling and validation of other marine renewable energies, such as offshore wind.

ResourceCODE, has been developed by a consortium led by ifremer – the French Institute of Ocean Science, and EMEC (European Marine Energy Centre) along with other project partners, including Innosea – the R&D, engineering and advisory specialists in marine renewable energies.

“Ocean technology holds substantial promise for the renewable sector, but its scalability and cost-effectiveness are hampered by the wide variety of environmental and spatial impacts on the technology’s infrastructure. ResourceCODE brings together a wide cross-reference of datasets to help understand varying loads impact on ocean energy infrastructure in different European locations. Ultimately, it delivers more accurate modelling early on in the development of the technologies and improved engineering designs for the long run,” says Remy Pascal, specialist engineer at Innosea.

Innosea has supported the consortium with coding expertise to help create the online data analysis tool, as well as contributing design experience in wave energy converters (WEC) to steer the project.

ResourceCODE encourages the development and verification of resource modelling techniques for wave and tidal energy by bringing together partner data from labs, existing models, satellites and extensive metocean datasets across North-West Europe.

This wide cross-section of modelling data, will underpin design and operational decisions in European marine renewable energy deployments, enabling the delivery of more informed and accurate engineering designs.

“The end result will be improved cost-efficiencies through enhanced engineering and industrial approaches underpinned by a wider cross-reference of data,” adds Remy Pascal.

The ResourceCODE toolbox was recently introduced in an online webinar hosted by the consortium on 10 March 2022. The recording of the webinar can be accessed here: https://www.emec.org.uk/projects/ocean-energy-projects/tool-development/resourcecode-project/

Innosea, which is part of ABL Group, is a leading engineering, design and R&D consulting firm specialising in marine renewables.