US-Ireland R and D program awards €500K for collaborative wave energy project

Maynooth University’s Centre for Ocean Energy Research (COER) has secured €500,000 through the joint US-Ireland research program for a collaborative wave energy project whose aim is to make the technology more commercially attractive.

Illustration/Wave energy device testing (Screenshot/Video by Maynooth University COER)Illustration/Wave energy device testing (Screenshot/Video by Maynooth University COER)

The funding was awarded through a tripartite research and development partnership between the United States of America, Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland.

The project, named Control Co-Design for Ocean Wave Energy Conversion, brings together partners from Maynooth University, Queen’s University Belfast inNorthern Ireland,and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in the US.

The collaboration aims to establish methodologies for an integrated design paradigm for wave energy devices, by testing and validating a radically new control co-design approach to create an innovative combined power take-off (PTO) and wave capture structure, to significantly improve the efficiency, increase the power output, and decrease the peak-to-average power ratio.

According to project partners, this is expected to help make wave energy converters more commercially attractive.  

Welcoming the announcement, Philip Nolan, director general of Science Foundation Ireland, said: “The growth of the US-Ireland R&D Partnership Program since its inception, highlights the significant value of our international collaborations. I am particularly pleased to see the evolution of a number of the groups that have now won multiple US-Ireland awards.

“I am delighted to congratulate the award recipients and their collaborators on their work which spans both fundamental and applied research and has the potential to greatly benefit our collective societies and economies.”

Director of the US National Science Foundation, Sethuraman Panchanathan, added: “The US-Ireland R&D Partnership program plays an important role in pushing the boundaries of frontier research beyond any borders.

“This unique research partnership model aims to generate, at speed and scale, valuable discoveries and innovations which are transferable to the marketplace or will lead to enhancements in health, climate resilience and telecommunications to improve our world. I congratulate the awardees and look forward to seeing how their outcomes contribute to successfully addressing global challenges.”