Irish Floating Wind and Wave Energy Test Site Seeking Floating LiDAR Services

February 9, 2024, by Adrijana Buljan

The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) has issued a call for tenders for a floating LiDAR and associated provision of data for the Atlantic Marine Energy Test Site (AMETS).

The scope of work under the contract that will be awarded through the tender includes the installation, operation, maintenance, collection of metocean data, and subsequent decommissioning of a floating LiDAR system at AMETS, and provision of “data as a service” using the collected data.

This will allow SEAI to have detailed weather and site conditions ready for sharing with technology developers planning to test their structures at AMETS.

The contract, valued at EUR 2.5 million, will be in effect for up to 36 months.

The deadline for submitting proposals is 12:00 local time on 11 March 2024.

The Atlantic Marine Energy Test Site, located west of Belmullet in County Mayo, is a floating wind and wave energy technology test site which has been in development for several years now.

SEAI obtained a foreshore lease for the site in 2015 to test wave energy technology and install export cables. Planning permission for the onshore infrastructure was granted in 2017. In 2018, SEAI started working on expanding the site’s scope to include floating wind technology.

At the beginning of last year, SEAI started offshore surveys at AMETS and commenced work on preparing a tender for an onshore substation which will connect AMETS to the grid. Around the same time, SEAI also revealed preparations were underway for a tender to procure a floating LiDAR.

The test site is an integral component of Ireland’s Ocean Energy Strategy and is being developed in accordance with the national Offshore Renewable Energy Development Plan (OREDP).

The site will provide two separate test locations with different water depths to allow a range of devices to be tested.

Test Area A will be located some 16 kilometres offshore of Belderra Strand, where the water depth is 100 metres, while Test Area B will be some 6 kilometres from Belderra Strand, at a water depth of 50 metres.