The Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Hub has launched its second round of Flexible Funding to advance research into the opportunities and challenges of offshore wind, wave and tidal energy.
This second round of Flexible Funding will award a total of up to £1.2m to researchers at UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), Research Council Institutes and Centres, and Independent Research Organisations (IROs) approved by UKRI, to seed areas that complement existing research, fill gaps or add cross cutting activities to explore the transfer of research findings between sectors within ORE.
In this round of funding, the Supergen ORE Hub has additional in-kind contributions from the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult. The Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult is supporting the funding call by offering in-kind research resource from one or more of its network of Research Hubs. This will involve a collaboration with some of the winning projects and the provision of Catapult support and additional PhD/PDRA Research Hub resource for up to 12 months.
“The Catapult’s network of Research Hubs, covering wind turbine blades, electrical infrastructure and powertrains, works to align industry-driven innovation priorities with applied academic research so that we can drive new products and services into the sector, improving productivity and efficiency and reducing energy costs. Aligning our relevant research priorities with Supergen ORE’s Flexible Funding calls is a win-win – encouraging vital collaboration between industry and academia to solve many of the technology challenges facing the offshore renewable energy sector today.”
“The UK is at the forefront of development, adoptions and export of offshore renewable technologies, and this second round of flexible funding will allow UK-based researchers to deliver fundamental and applied research to advance the sector. Additional industrial support from ORE Catapult strengthens academic-industry collaboration in the ORE sector.”
In 2019 the Supergen ORE Hub awarded almost £1m to ten projects in its first round of Flexible Funding. Funded projects included investigations into the recycling process of wind turbine blades, the development of underwater robotic fish for device inspection, and using satellite data for enabling cost reduction of marine renewables. A full list of the previous awardees can be found online.
Expressions of Interest (EOI) for the Flexible Funding are open now, with a closing date of 5:00pm (GMT) on 3 April 2020. Applications should be submitted electronically through an online EOI form which can be found in the Flexible Funding call document on the Flexible Funding webpage.
