Sener Ingeniería y Sistemas, S.A. is one of the companies participating in the CENIT-E OCEAN LIDER Project, led by Iberdrola. The Project is a technological initiative promoted by a consortium of companies with strong research capacity facing the challenge of generating knowledge for the efficient exploitation of the oceanic renewable resources. SENER is going to investigate in two of the five Activities within the Project.
Activity II aims to research technologies and energy production systems from renewable oceanic sources, such as waves and currents. But the most ambitious project is the energy obtained from the wind, waves, currents and tides simultaneously. The use of the new developing technologies for waves and currents energy generation in addition to the consolidated from the wind is expected to generate efficient and optimized results in the exploitation of the oceanic resources in suitable and available sites.
The tasks of the Project include all the main issues regarding the design of the systems already mentioned, their mechanisms and design elements, the portable structures, materials, and the converted and mooring systems and its coupling in marine structures with enough stability and security. SENER will develop the structural analysis of the unit that will host all these technologies using the finite elements method, and will also make the stability calculation and the longitudinal strength.
Activity V, in which SENER is also taking part, aims the research of new technologies, methodologies and systems allowing the necessary marine activities with tighter times and costs, in order to minimize the number of operations, its complexity and the security risks. First of all, it will be done a comprehensive study of the current systems and its deficiencies with the purpose of defining the optimum operations. In particular, these operations are the structures installation, and the maneuvering of entering and docking both for maintenance and dismantling. The research investigation will identify new technologies and methods but also will optimize the existing ones.
Finally, Sener will develop a study around the State of the Art of the necessary vessels related with this new energy, for the towing, mounting, building, auxiliary services, maintenance, wind turbines operation and offshore installations. Taking in mind the operation requirements on the implementation of the new defined units, SENER will also develop the basic design of a vessel for all these needs.