Pre-Commercial Procurement: Design, develop, and demonstrate wave energy converter systems (EuropeWave PCP).

This contract notice invites interested operators to submit tenders for the EuropeWave pre-commercial procurement (PCP). The EuropeWave PCP aims to accelerate the design, development, and demonstration of cost-effective wave energy converter (WEC) systems to produce clean electricity, advance promising designs for wave energy converter systems to a point from which they are ready to proceed to a first of a kind commercial-scale design and testing programme and commercial exploitation through other national/regional programmes and/or private sector investment. The main technical challenges to be addressed may be expressed in terms of: - Performance – obtain quantitative evidence of power capture and conversion capability and increase confidence in yield predictions from simulations. - Survivability – demonstrate effective survival strategies. - Availability – demonstrate levels of availability through reliable prototype operation. - Affordability – increase confidence in estimations of the technology costs (capital and operational) and the requirements to achieve a LCOE which is competitive in the target market. The culmination of the EuropeWave PCP programme (Phase 3) will see prototypes, at substantial scale and with fully representative subsystems, deployed at the open-water facilities of the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Scotland and the Biscay Marine Energy Platform (BiMEP) in the Basque Country and operated for a minimum period to demonstrate device performance, reliability and cost. Physical model testing in earlier phases is expected to take place in Instituto de Hidráulica Ambiental de Cantabria (IHC) and FloWave Ocean Energy Research Facility (FloWave). This joint procurement exercise is being undertaken by Wave Energy Scotland in its role of lead procurer acting in the name and on behalf of the procurers of the EuropeWave buyers group: - Wave Energy Scotland, An Lochran, 10 Inverness Campus, Inverness, IV2 5NA, Scotland, UK (Company number SC493764); - Ente Vasco de la Energía, Alameda de Urquijo 36, 1, Bilbao 48011, Basque Country, Spain (Company number Q5150001E), NUTS code: ES2, https://www.eve.eus.