December 2019 OES Beacon Events

OSES 2019 BREST FRANCE, July 10-12 2019 at IMT Atlantique

“Energy Systems with Sea in their DNA”

René Garello (IMT Atlantique / OES), life Fellow

Context

The OSES conference series addresses offshore energy systems – with major emphasis on the word “systems”. Offshore wind has dominated the arena of energy harvesting offshore – and it has done a superb job of showing just how rich the energy resources are offshore and how inexpensively these energy resources can be exploited. Expectations on cost reduction for all offshore energy systems are now driving innovations like never before. This is probably more true for offshore wind than for any other offshore energy form. In the past, the presence of subsidies has meant that the offshore wind technology developers could take what was essentially a design for onshore wind turbines, scale it up, marinise the nacelle and then support the turbine on a tower that looks as much as possible like the towers supporting onshore machines.

The paradigm of trying to take energy systems developed for application on land and port them into the marine environment is now being challenged fatally. Logic calls for machines to be optimised to the environment for which they intended and not simply to emulate machines that have been optimised for a very different environment. Perhaps surprisingly, it will be system cost that actually drives the innovation in future.

OSES2019 focused especially on systems that are designed with marine DNA already in their blood. This includes floating platforms for both wind turbines and PV collectors, hybrid systems that cater for the collection of energy in multiple forms, the integration of energy storage with electricity generation and various energy harvesting approaches that simply have no equivalent on land.

OSES2019 was a significant agent of change – helping the community to observe that the future of offshore energy is not simply a linear extrapolation of the past.

Meeting

The meeting held in Brest, France, on July 10 to 12, 2019, gathered about 70 international participants from around the world, ranging from academia to industry or agencies. The event was sponsored by the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society (OES) with the support of France Energies Marines, the French Institute for Energy Transition dedicated to Marine Renewable Energies. The OES French chapter was running the local arrangements and the overall technical aspects of the workshops were handled by the Ocean Sustainable Energy Systems (OSES) Technology Committee. The workshop was organized around 45 oral presentations and 5 plenary talks. It reviewed the latest advances in storage models, energy generation and integration of renewables with storage. A YouTube rendition of the meeting can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5YooMXa5Mg

The technical management of the sessions were supervised by the OSES “team”, Tonio Sant, Seamus Garvey, Rupp Cariveau and Jochen Bard. 12 sessions were organized, with two half-days of parallel sessions. The sessions were divided in the following main themes:

  • OFFSHORE PLATFORMS AND STORAGE MODEL TESTS
  • IMPLEMENTATION OF NEW WIND AND STORAGE
  • SUSTAINABILITY IN OFFSHORE ENGINEERING
  • ADVANCEMENTS IN STORAGE – PART 1
  • GENERATION – WAVE ENERGY
  • INTEGRATING RENEWABLES WITH STORAGE – PART 1, WIND
  • INTEGRATING RENEWABLES WITH STORAGE – PART 2
  • ADVANCED GENERATION AND STORAGE
  • ADVANCEMENTS IN STORAGE – PART 2
  • CAES (Compressed Air Energy Storage)
  • DESALINATION AND NAVIGATION
  • GENERATION – TIDAL

Plenary talks

The following plenary talks presented the visions and developments of global programs and R&D works:

Funding the Innovation: What is in for Our Ocean?
Andreea Strachinescu
Head of Unit, Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, European Commission

An Overview of Offshore Renewable Energy Development in France
Yann-Hervé De Roeck
General Manager, French Energies Marines

Wind Energy Development in the U.S.
Daniel Laird
Director, National Wind Technology Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, USA

Wave Energy at Crossroads
Gregorio Iglesias Rodriguez
Professor at MaREI, University College Cork

Requirements of a Low-Carbon Energy Infrastructure
Axel Laval
Energy Asset Manager, Crown Estate, UK


Yann-Hervé De Roeck addressing the attendees
during his plenary talk.
Daniel Laird during his plenary talk.
Rodica Loisel from University of Nantes
A view of the attendees
During the gala dinner in the Bay of Brest
“Aperitif” time