RiaSoR 2

Marine energy devices operate in harsh environments but still need to perform reliably and produce an expected amount of energy, which gives rise to huge engineering challenges.

The OceanERANET-funded RiaSoR 2 project will use the theoretical reliability assessment framework for wave and tidal energy converters (WEC/TEC) developed in RiaSoR1 and apply it to the field.

This will enable WEC/TEC developers to validate their findings, and establish a practical condition based monitoring platform to prepare for future arrays where big data handling and processing will be vital to drive down operational expenditures (OPEX).

The RiaSoR 1 reliability framework built upon established practices from the automotive industry where a monitoring framework is applied to a fleet of test-vehicles. Through design iterations, the reliability is improved and a final reduced set of sensors are deployed in the commercial vehicle.

For RiaSoR 2, the chosen components for monitoring are equipped with several sensors to collect the required data, which will then be fed into the reliability process to reduce uncertainties. Sea tests act as case studies to feed the methodologies and training into the framework. The findings from this will then be trialled with the other developers.

The key objective of the RiaSoR 2 project is to offer a comprehensive suite of testing methodologies to wave and tidal developers that will enable a systematic approach to achieve optimal reliability and performance, while minimising cost and time-to-market.