OES-Blue energy collaborative scholarship
Call for Applications
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The Blue Energy Collaborative Scholarship (BECS) grant advances formative research in the field of offshore renewable energy and promotes collaboration and communication amongst early-career professionals from diverse disciplines, institutions, and nations.
Up to 1000€ can be awarded to cover research expenses, such as raw materials and instrumentation, and travel expenses. This encompasses travel to the research institute where the collaborative work will take place or conference travel.
In addition to providing an opportunity for international work, the Ocean Energy Systems (OES) BECS grant seeks to advance the field of offshore renewable energy through publication of research results and journal papers, making the results accessible to a wide audience.
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1. OES-BECS applications must involve at least two INOREans, from two different research organizations and must be early-stage career researchers.
2. The aim of OES-BECS scholarships is the international collaboration. Due to this, at least two members of the team must be affiliated to institutions from different countries.
3. (optional) One bonus point will be awarded to the team with at least one collaborator from underserved regions. -
Work carried out utilizing support from an OES-BECS grant should result in the submission of a journal or conference paper, and information of the work will be provided for use on the INORE website, and for information for sponsors. A summary (in any case), a Power Point presentation (if the results are presented in a conference) and/or a poster presentation (if the results are presented in a journal paper) should be sent to INORE.
OES-BECS and INORE should be part of the acknowledgements.
INOREans must send an update of the budget and plan before the second installment is given. The update must include execution and modifications made, including stage information and more details about the research, using the initial version submitted with the application as a reference. INORE assumes that this deadline is enough to organize the work. The plan and budget must be approved in order to get the second installment of the grant. If this milestone is not achieved the granted INOREans will lose the funding and it will be offered to another project.
50% of the grant will be transferred to the research team at the time of the publication of the awarded teams list. The rest of the grant will be transferred as follows:
INORE will refund the costs of the collaboration after receiving tickets for flights and accommodation, or other expenses (up to total funding). This will be awarded as soon as the result of the collaboration is submitted (or planned to be submitted) to a journal or a conference within the 2026 calendar year. The cost of the final expense must be within reason in accordance to the updated approved budget submitted to INORE.
The deadline for requesting the money associated to the grant or the expected results of OES-BECS grant is at the end of the 2026 Calendar year. The amount of money that will not be transferred to the research team will be invested in other INORE activities.
Past OES-BECS Project Awardees
Cyril Delaporte (1) and Salvatore Campasso (2)
2025, (1) Weco, Netherlands, (2) UPC, Spain
Wave energy is one of the world’s largest underexploited renewable resources, with a global potential above 29,000 TWh per year. Despite its potentiality, the sector continues to face challenges including technological immaturity, high development costs, and limited validation at realistic scale. Targeting simplicity, scalability, and survivability for wave energy technologies, Weco (The Netherlands) developed the Kaizen Wave Energy Converter (WEC), a compact and modular device designed to harvest wave energy by converting the orbital motion of ocean waves into rotational motion through a pulley-based Power Take-Off (PTO) system. Its design makes it suitable for low-cost deployment in remote and industrial offshore environments. However, to elevate the prototype to the required Technological Readiness Level (TRL), it is necessary to perform accurate performance prediction and optimization procedures, which can result in high experimental costs. The use of advanced numerical models can significantly speed-up the design process, and minimize capital expenditures, as they enable serialized testing in realistic numerical environments, providing reliable insights on WECs’ performance at sea.
Aiming at establishing a reliable digital replica of the Kaizen WEC, this collaborative project focuses on developing and implementing a physically consistent numerical model of its proprietaryPTO within DualSPHysics, an open-source Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) framework. DualSPHysics offers robust free-surface simulation capabilities, integrated wave generation, and coupling with MoorDynPlus for mooring dynamics — well suited features for simulating a moored WEC under realistic sea conditions. Additionally, the coupling with Project Chrono enables the application of mechanical constraints, rotational springs, and custom torque laws, making it possible to represent PTO systems within an SPH environment.The PTO force will be implemented as an external mechanical load derived from floater kinematics and mooring interactions, allowing for the detailed investigation of the hydrodynamic–mechanical coupling, and its effect on energy absorption.
The research will: (1) Derive the mathematical formulation for the rotational PTO torque and damping; define the mechanical interaction between the floater, axle and mooring as well as defining geometric constraints; (2) Implement the PTO model in DualSPHysics using the Chrono coupling interface; integrate with MoorDynPlus for mooring
interaction; (3) Compare model results with experimental Deltares data (rotation speed, absorbed power, mooring tension). Adjust parameters for accurate hydrodynamic representation; and (4) Analyze performance sensitivity to damping coefficients and control parameters. Prepare presentation for 8DSW and joint journal submission. This collaboration between Weco, Universidade de Vigo, and UPC-BarcelonaTech brings together industrial device development, numerical modeling expertise, and SPH simulations know-how. Working jointly on model implementation, testcase development, and calibration ensures cross-institutional knowledge exchange and accelerates the development of an open-source, validated modelling workflow for wave energy PTO systems. The expected results include a fully integrated SPH-based model of the Kaizen WEC PTO, validated against controlled laboratory experiments, and applied to numerically explore PTO performance across sea states and control strategies. The results of this work will be presented at the 8th DualSPHysics Workshop (8DSW, Ourense, January 2025), followed by the preparation of a joint publication for peer-reviewed journals, such as Ocean Engineering or Renewable Energy . Support from the OES–BECS scholarship will enable in-person collaboration, direct interaction with the DualSPHysics developer community, and timely dissemination of results, strengthening ties between academia and industry and contributing to the broader wave energy community.
Hamed Nademi, Alin Hanna, Erik Jocelyn, and Gabriel Tellez Ornelas
2024, CSU San Marcos
CSUSM team uses the already developed Ocean Wave Energy converter concept and preliminary prototype as part of the DOE MECC 2024 to be employed for the proper conditioning of the wave energy converter power take-off system (PTO). In this year competition we plan to look into hardware development and further study different designs of PTO system requirements with respect to the operational specifications, manufacturing and market analysis, and marketing plan. The wave energy converter together with other marine renewables aim to power desalination plant. The desalination plant is in operation in Carlsbad, CA serves 10% of the water supply in San Diego County. Our team has interviewed the technical advisor of this plant and already initiated a plan to involve Carlsbad Desalination plant to our experimental set-up development and field data exchange. This is on-going process, and we hope the CSUSM team award this scholarship will lead to acquiring a hardware equipment needed to perform an actual data analysis and a pilot testing in Spring 2025. The principal outcomes of the project in this year are: 1) Demonstrate a proof-of-concept of a desalination plant powered by renewable energy (wave energy converter) and show the feasibility for designing, fabricating, and testing of scale-model prototype, 2) establish industry partnership with regional marine industry, 3) Advance the outcomes of the competition to local community colleges and Public High School System's early college entry program in San Diego County, CA. to disseminate the findings and results, we expect to submit a journal and conference papers.
Qiang Gao (1), Nesimi Ertugrul (1), Alva Bechlenberg (2), and Antonis I. Vakis (2)
2022, (1) The University of Adelaide, (2) University of Groningen
Offshore wind and wave power are abundant energy sources and could provide long term contributions to our future energy supply. Unlike wind turbines, whose technological maturity has enabled tremendous growth in recent years, wave energy converters (WECs) are still not commercially viable despite hundreds of devices having been proposed in the last century. This lack of convergence towards a mature WEC design prohibits their further development since significant capital expenditures are needed to develop systems whose economic performance –especially due to the large uncertainty in operations and maintenance costs because of the harsh working conditions involved– is hard to predict. The integration of offshore wind and wave energy, on the other hand, presents a number of benefits reported in the literature, including enhanced energy production, cost reduction due to shared facilities and energy variability reduction. However, most studies focus on the hydrodynamic response and pure economic analysis/comparison of combined wind and wave conversion systems. In terms of distinct power intermittency between both renewables, large power variations lead to a significant challenge to effective electrical power regulation and transmission. Therefore, energy storage systems are required in ocean energy harnessing to mitigate the energy variability for a reliable and consistent electrical supply, thereby forming more dispatchable renewables. However, energy storage systems suitable for ocean energy have not been systematically studied from technical and economic perspectives. In this project, we will analyse the requirements of distributed energy storage for offshore wind turbines and compare them with combined offshore wind and wave systems based on a techno-economic assessment while achieving the same level of power smoothing effect.
The main contributions of this project are: first, to investigate the power intermittency between the offshore wind and wave energy resources and how it can be mitigated by using energy storage systems; second, to compare the feasibility and energy variability reduction of a wind turbine with a distributed storage system and a wind turbine with a wave energy converter system through a techno-economic assessment. In addition, different potential sea sites for developing offshore energy farms in European and Australian regions are compared and discussed to investigate the sensitivity of location selection.
Therefore, this study could provide more systematic reviews for industry partners, investors and policymakers at the pre- planning stage of developing ocean renewable energy systems.
Vaibhav Raghavan (1), Touhidul Islam (2), Dr. George Lavidas (1) and Prof. Venki Venugopal (2)
2023, (1) TU Delft, (2) University of Edinburgh
Wave energy converters (WECs) are expected to significantly contribute to the energy transition, however this is dependent on their interactions with the resource. Calculating the power generated by WECs depends heavily on the accurate modelling of wave-structure interactions. The boundary element method (BEM) based on the linear potential flow theory has yielded accurate results at low computational costs when compared to complex numerical methods such as Computational Fluid Dynamics. WAMIT (commercial) and Nemoh (open source) are two of the most popular BEM solvers based on the linear potential flow theory and have been widely used for analyzing wave-structure interaction for WECs. Hydrodynamic Analysis of Marine Structures (HAMS) is a recently developed open-source BEM frequency domain solver. To date it has been applied to single WECs with spherical/cylindrical/rectangular geometries and the TALOS WEC considering rigid body motions. HAMS offers unique advantages over other solvers by providing accurate solutions compared to more popular open-source solvers such as Nemoh, and lower computational costs as compared to both Nemoh and WAMIT, for specific cases, owing to its parallelization technique. This research will extend its current capabilities to model flexible structures or structures with hinges/joints by applying the generalized modes approach. This will make it capable of analysing WECs such as the Attenuators or the Oscillating Surge Wave Energy Converter, thus making it the one of the most computationally efficient open source BEM solvers with the capability of analysing flexible structures or structures with hinges/joints.
This project is a collaboration between the Marine Renewable Energies Lab (MREL) at TU Delft and the Institute of Energy Systems at the University of Edinburgh. The project hopes to extend the capabilities of an existing computationally efficient open-source BEM solver, thus allowing it to be used to perform the hydrodynamic analysis for flexible structures or structures with joints and hinges. Subsequently, it is expected to present these results, or part of them, at an international conference related to topics such as renewable energies, numerical wave modelling, blue energy, energy and sustainability or wave energy harvesting by converters. The collaborator Vaibhav Raghavan, from TU Delft, will attend a research stay at the University of Edinburgh (partially funded). The funds provided by the OES blue energy collaborative scholarship would be used to cover the part of the expenses that the researcher Raghavan will incur during his stay at the Edinburgh. Also, another part of the OES BECS amount would be invested to pay the travel expenses to attend a conference where the research findings will be presented.
Manuel Alejandro Corrales (1), Giovanni Besio (1) and George Lavidas (2)
2022, (1) University of Genoa, (2) TU Delft
Renewable energies acquired relevance in last decades after impacts of fossil energy consumption, more recently, because of the shutdowns of energy supplies such as natural gas. The good practices and Sustainable Development Goals of United Nations (SGDs) aim to optimize the efficient use of resources and reduce the environmental impact, so clean energies from the sea are a suitable option to follow the same target. In addition, it is interesting how the wave energetic behaves along the Pacific region of Central America, where the maritime climate and meteo-oceanic conditions differ significantly from those of the North Sea, Northern Pacific Ocean, or the Mediterranean Sea, where research is at an advanced stage. Because of the above-mentioned, a wave energy assessment will perform over the Central American region of the Pacific Ocean. The development of a calibrated and validated 40 years-wave hindcast over the whole Pacific basin was performed by using an unstructured wave model by using the Wavewatch III model. Specifically, the region of study extends from -4° to 16° in latitude, and from -92.7° up to -76.6 ° western longitude. The wave modelling considers a higher spatial resolution over the Central American region, and hourly output results. Thus, a finer wave hindcast outcomes will be used as input information to the energetic assessment. There exist numerous investigations in repositories regarding to the ocean energies, several of them based on studies over the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, for instance. The project presented herein aims to publish the findings of the wave energy assessment described above in a high impact scientific journal, according to commonly consulted metrics. Subsequently, it is expected to present these results, or part of them, at an international conference related to topics such as renewable energies, numerical wave modelling, blue energy, energy and sustainability or wave energy harvesting by converters. Likewise, this project is a collaborative work between two departments, MetOcean, at the University of Genoa, and the Marine & Hydro based energies at the Offshore Engineering group at the Delft University of Technology. The collaborator Manuel Corrales, from the University of Genova, will attend a research stay at the University of Technology Delft (partially funded) regarding to the wave energy in the Pacific Central American region. The funds provided by the OES blue energy collaborative scholarship would be used to cover the part of the expenses that the researcher Corrales will incur during his stay at the University of Delft. Also, another part of the OES BECS amount would be invested to pay the travel expenses to attend a conference where the research findings will be presented.
Zou Shangyan (1), Markel Penalba (2), Moien Mojabi (3), and Bryson Robertson (1)
2021, (1) Oregon State University USA, (2) Mondragon University Spain, (3) University of Victoria Canada
The primary goal of this study is to improve the state-of-the-art numerical modeling of largescale Wave Energy Converter (WEC) arrays in a disturbed wave field. WECs are preferably deployed in a large array, considering the large amount of power (e.g., MW level) generated from WEC arrays and the reduction in Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) due to the improved power quality and shared operating expenditures and infrastructure costs of WECs array. Therefore, it is important to accurately assess the performance of large-scale WEC arrays and their impact on the coastal environment. Unlike a single WEC, which assumes an undisturbed incoming wave field, the incoming wave field of a WEC in the array is heavily disturbed by other devices. Particularly, the wave power available to a device that is in the leeward of another WEC is reduced considering the power that has been absorbed and lost. Accordingly, it is critical and challenging to understand the impacts of WECs on wave propagation which is not adequately studied in the literature. To address this challenge, the research that is ongoing at Oregon State University (OSU) studies the wave attenuation/regeneration introduced by other devices and its impacts on the incoming wave spectrum of each device in the array. Traditional calculation of wave power attenuation only considers the contribution of wave power absorption, which is shown in a recent study that is an underestimation. The actual power that is intercepted by the WECs (considers wave power reduction due to absorption, PTO losses, mooring losses, viscous losses, etc.) needs to be accounted for when modifying the incoming wave spectrum of WECs in the array. The developed numerical model will be validated and calibrated by the experimental tank testing (proposed by Oscilla Power®) that will be conducted at O.H. Hinsdale wave research laboratory at OSU. Up to seven devices will be placed in the tank and tested under varied
wave conditions. The generated experimental results will be served as the foundation for the proposed numerical modeling. The ongoing research at Mondragon University is focused on the wave-to-wire modeling and control of WEC arrays, including nonlinear dynamics and non-ideal efficiencies of the power take-off (PTO) system. Energy maximizing control can significantly alter the behavior of WECs and, thus, WEC-disturbed wave field, which has a particularly important impact on WEC arrays. Therefore, for the adequate design of WEC array controllers and layouts, the estimation of the disturbed wave field under control conditions is crucial. The participation of Mondragon University will include the impact of PTO dynamics and control into the analysis in this project, enabling future integral optimization of the WEC array layout via global cooperative control. The ongoing research at the Pacific Regional Institute of Maritime Energy Discovery (PRIMED), University of Victoria, is mainly focused on the evaluation and adoption of marine renewable energy technologies. PRIMED is closely working with both communities and the private sector to provide them with accurate and detailed descriptions of the wave energy resources along the British Columbia coastline for remote communities. This includes developing high fidelity numerical models of wave energy converters, PTO systems, and assessment of marine energy resources. Considering the significant overlapping on the research interests and strengths across three universities, a collaborative study is proposed in this project to improve the numerical modeling of large-scale WECs array and address introduced technical challenges. This research not only aligns well with the research interests of the collaborators but also improves the understanding of the collaborators and complements the research that is currently conducted in three institutions. The objectives of this research are: (1) to provide an opportunity for all the collaborators to meet at OSU, observe the physical wave tank testing of WECs array at OSU, and exchange ideas to improve WECs array modeling; (2) to improve the understanding of the intercepted power (considering PTO losses, mooring losses, viscous losses, etc.) and power transmission in the array; (3) to finally develop an improved numerical model for large WECs array which can be used to accurately assess array performance and its environmental impacts.
Natham Tom (1) and Adam Stock Edward Hart (2)
2019, (1) National Renewable Energy Laboratory, (2) University of Stratchlyde
Despite the theoretically optimum form of control for wave energy converters (WECs) being known for some time , many WECs in production still use simple linear damping. This is in part because design of such controllers that are robust enough for application to actual machines is a non-trivial task. In order to make advanced controllers more accessible and easier to design, Dr Stock and his team developed IMPACT (the Integrated Marine Point Absorber Control Tool) as part of a Wave Energy Scotland control call. IMPACT is a control toolbox that quickly and easily generates control models for point absorber WECs. The tool can then be used to design an Optimal Velocity Tracking (OVT) controller, after which the controller and WEC information can automatically populate in built WEC models and controller realisations that are suitable for simulation using the WEC-Sim simulation package. Using the control methodologies developed through IMPACT very large improvements in the energy capture of WECs can be achieved compared to the baseline linear damping methodology. Increases of 5.5 times the energy capture for a WEC in representative Scottish waters were found .
As with all impedance matching control methodologies for WECs (including Model Predictive Control and Approximate Complex-Conjugate Control) the limitations of the Power Take-Off (PTO), particularly with regards to force output and efficiency at low speeds reduce the effectiveness of the controller significantly unless properly accounted for . The previous work on IMPACT undertook a preliminary investigation of the issues and potential solutions, however there is scope for a much more detailed investigation, which is the aim of this project.
The issues restricting the energy capture of WECs using the OVT methodology are predominantly the PTO efficiency, and the PTO force, which are driven by the phase of the WEC dynamics. In impedance matching controllers the force response of the WEC is linked to both the resistance and the reactance of the system impedance. As the phase of the dynamics move away from zero degrees (at resonant frequencies) the PTO provides reactive power to maximise the real power take off. This requires increasing force at low speeds as the phase moves further from 0. Unfortunately, most PTOs are designed to have high efficiency and the capability to deliver high amounts of force at high speed and not to provide large amounts of force, nor be very efficient, at low speeds. PTOs are designed in this way partly as this is the optimum design for the commonly used linear damping strategies, which do not provide reactive mechanical power, and partly because the dynamics of many generators restrict the designer from alternatives. Without remedial action to ameliorate the efficiency and force issues OVT controllers do not provide increased energy capture and increases loading on the system. This project aims to provide the remedial action required via the following approaches: 1. additions to the controller algorithm to take efficiencies into account, 2. potential switching between OVT and linear damping methodologies in extreme conditions, and 3. suggesting practical and technically feasible alterations to the PTO design to better match the PTO to reactive control approaches.
Caitlyn Clark (1), Anna Garcia-Teruel (2)
2018, (1) Oregon State University USA, (2) University of Edinburg
In previous work, WECs have been optimized for cost and power production (particularly the floating body of point-absorber type WEC), where costs were represented by device size. Previous methods used for integrating structural integrity analysis at different stages of WEC development, concluding that environmental conditions and device configuration need to be considered simultaneously when defining different design cases, e.g. PTO or mooring restrictions. For the purpose of this study, they will analyze the variation of Power Take-Off (PTO) forces depending on floater geometry and develop a reliability assessment method to evaluate PTO failure depending on these loads. They will then include this reliability assessment method within a geometry optimization process, so that geometries with advantageous reliability scores (regarding this PTO-failure mode) can be prioritized and analyzed. They will complete this analysis with an existing geometry optimization code developed at The University of Edinburgh, which is based on previous work and allows for a very flexible geometry definition. A PTO-force time series for an irregular sea can be obtained from a frequency-domain model, which will help in limiting the evaluation run time for the optimization process. Based on this PTO response, they will then use Rainflow Counting to count the number of fatigue cycles and relate it to Damage Equivalent Load metrics for the PTO. This work will enable further work and collaboration between Oregon State University, University of Edinburgh, with expressed interest from Sandia National Laboratories. Completion of this study will enable a proof-of-method and will serve as basis for further funding opportunities, such as the John Moyes Lessels Travel Fund from the Royal Academy in Edinburgh or the Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher Exchanges from the Scottish Research Partnership in Engineering. The grant will be used for necessary collaboration activities, such as travel to conferences, open source publishing fees, etc.
Adi Kurniawan (1) and Xiantao Zhang (2)
2017, (1) Aalborg University, (2) University of Western Australia
Harnessing energy from ocean waves in an economic manner remains a challenge. Recent efforts are targeted at improving the performance of a wave energy device without the use of reactive control. One such strategy is to use a negative stiffness mechanism. The application of negative stiffness mechanism on devices other than point absorbers has so far been limited. This collaborative project therefore aims to extend the application of negative stiffness on pitching wave energy devices. The project will be carried out mainly through numerical studies, first using a linear frequency-domain model and then a time-domain model. The effects of the negative stiffness will be first investigated using a frequency-domain model. For this purpose, equivalent linearized stiffness of the negative springs will be derived. Subsequently, a time-domain model of the device will be developed based on the frequency-domain model, and the fully nonlinear expression of the negative stiffness will be included in the model.
Aisha McKee (1) and Jarrah Orphin (2)
2017, (1) Oregon State University, (2) Australian Maritime College
In experimental hydrodynamics many possible sources of uncertainty exist. Small-scale tank testing of an Oscillating Water Column (OWC) Wave Energy Converter (WEC) is subject to uncertainty throughout the energy extraction process. Variability in measured data, especially damping and pressure measurements which are ultimately used in the calculation of the theoretical power output, play a large role in the uncertainty of the power output. In small- scale WEC experiments, additional uncertainties are introduced due to the simulation of a power take-off (PTO) system. This project seeks to apply the methods developed by Orphin et al. using two types of uncertainty analysis to quantify this uncertainty. The first method (statistical means through repeat observation) uses repeated measurements taken during tank testing to qualify the uncertainty, while the second method (non-statistical means) determines uncertainty by analysing sensor calibration data and conducting a regression analysis to calculate the uncertainty. Using these methods, the uncertainty of a five OWC array will be determined during testing at Oregon State University’s O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory.