On December 13, the Bilbao Exhibition Centre (BEC) hosted another meeting of the Wave Energy Sector Forum coordinated by IDOM, which brought together the main players in the sector in the Basque Country, with more than 30 attendees.

The round of presentations got underway with an overview of the ocean energy sector by the Basque Energy Cluster, in which it reviewed the developments in the sector to date, future prospects and the most important strategic initiatives that are currently underway at a global, European and national level.

This was followed by the first block focusing on strategic initiatives originating in the Basque Country. The EVE presented the progress made in the EuropeWave and TurboWave initiatives, with a review on the most significant milestones completed in the first phases. IDOM presented the MARMOK ATLANTIC project within the framework of EuropeWave, while CETO presented the ACHIEVE project, in which Saitec is a member of the consortium. Both projects have made it to the third and final phase of EuropeWave and will therefore install their devices on BiMEP in 2025 to complete a year of in-water testing. CETO also presented the AGUAMARINA project, which received a €1.2 M grant under the Renmarinas Demo programme.

After the coffee break and networking space, it was the turn of a second block focusing on two additional projects that have also been funded under the Renmarinas Demo programme. BiMEP began by explaining what the OLAGARRO project will consist of. This project has a budget of €5.3 million to promote improvements to BiMEP's infrastructure. TECNALIA then presented the PLUGHARSHLAB project, the aim of which is to add a dynamic cable to the HarshLab device and act as a multi-connector at the BiMEP test site. There is a budget of €450k to do this.

TECNALIA went on to provide details about the update to the European Strategic Agenda for Ocean Energy Research carried out by SEETIPOCEAN, followed by MONDRAGON UNIBERTSITY, which outlined the progress made in the KONFLOT project “Control co-design of floating renewables” under the Elkartek 2022 programme. The Basque Energy Cluster rounded off the day with a review of the grant programmes that are currently open within the framework of the ELBE EUROCLUSTER, and those that will be launched in the near future. Finally, a number of questions were put to attendees to find out about their interest in attending the most important sectoral trade fairs next year.