Reliability guidance published for marine energy developers

The Reliability in a Sea of Risk (RiaSoR) project has published new guidance advising on the assessment of reliability in marine energy converters.

Available to download from the RiaSoR website, the ‘Reliability Guidance for Marine Energy Converters’ report transfers experience in the application of Variation Mode and Effect Analysis (VMEA) from the automotive and aerospace industries to the ocean energy sector.

Developed by SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden, in association with the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) and the ORE Catapult Development Services Ltd (ODSL), the new reliability methodology looks at the design criteria for marine energy converters, with the different phases of VMEA explained in detail.

To demonstrate the application of VMEA, the guidance document also provides case studies looking at structural, electrical and mooring/foundation elements of devices, with a short reference guide and Excel template provided to support future application of the tool.

A workshop was held in Glasgow earlier this month to provide an overview and training on the use of the methodology. To ensure that the learning from the project is disseminated and applied throughout the industry, a video of the presentations from this workshop is also available to view online: RiaSoR workshop video.

The RiaSoR project is funded by the Ocean Energy European Research Area Network (OCEANERA-NET) First Joint Call 2014, in association with Scottish Enterprise, InnovateUK and Swedish Energy Agency.

Karen Fraser, Marine Energy Senior Executive at Scottish Enterprise and Coordinator of OCEAN ERA-NET commented:

“I am very pleased to see this outcome from the first OCEANERA-NET Joint Call 2014 for collaborative research and development projects. OCEANERA-NET aims to add value by supporting international collaboration to meet the needs of the sector, and this project is successfully tackling one of the identified key challenges, improving reliability.”