OBJECTIVE:

Research in the MARINA Platform project will establish a set of equitable and transparent criteria for the evaluation of multi-purpose platforms for marine renewable energy (MRE). Using these criteria, the project will produce a novel, whole-system set of design and optimisation tools addressing, inter alia, new platform design, component engineering, risk assessment, spatial planning, platform-related grid connection concepts, all focussed on system integration and reducing costs. These tools will be used, incorporating into the evaluation all, presently known proposed designs including (but not limited to) concepts originated by the project partners, to produce two or three realisations of multi-purpose renewable energy platforms. These will be brought to the level of preliminary engineering designs with estimates for energy output, material sizes and weights, platform dimensions, component specifications and other relevant factors. This will allow the resultant new multi-purpose MRE platform designs, validated by advanced modelling and tank-testing at reduced scale, to be taken to the next stage of development, which is the construction of pilot scale platforms for testing at sea.