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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/S000747/1
Title: Supergen ORE hub 2018
Principal Investigator: Greaves, Professor D
Other Investigators:
Thies, Professor PR White, Professor DJ Scott, Professor B
Brennan, Professor FP Byrne, Professor BW Zhao, Professor X
Jeffrey, Mr H Stallard, Professor TJ Gilbert, Professor J
Willden, Professor RHJ
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Arup Group Ltd Atkins Atlantis Operations (UK) Ltd
BP Carbon Trust Carnegie Wave Energy Ltd (UK)
EDF European Marine Energy Centre Ltd (EMEC) Fugro Ltd
Garrad Balfour Ltd. Lloyd's Register Group Marine Scotland Science
Norwegian Geotechnical Institute Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult OpenHydro Group Ltd
RenewableUK Siemens Technical University of Denmark
The Crown Estate The Green Alliance Trust University of Western Australia
Wave Energy Scotland Wave Hub
Department: Sch of Engineering
Organisation: University of Plymouth
Scheme: Standard Research
Starts: 01 July 2018 Ends: 30 June 2023 Value (£): 9,193,414
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Energy - Marine & Hydropower Wind Power
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Energy
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Panel DatePanel NameOutcome
27 Apr 2018 Supergen Hubs 2018 Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
The UK is at the forefront of the development, adoption and export of Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) technologies: offshore wind (OW), wave and tidal energy. To sustain this advantage, the UK must spearhead research and innovation in ORE, which will accelerate its adoption and widen the applicability of these technologies. Many organisations across the industry-academia spectrum contribute to ORE research and development (R&D) co-ordination and the ORE Supergen hub strategy will take a leadership role, integrating with these activities to guide and deliver fundamental research to advance the ORE sector.

The role of the Supergen ORE hub is to provide research leadership for the ORE community to enable transformation to future scale ORE. The hub will articulate the vision for the future scale ORE energy landscape, will identify the innovations required and the fundamental research needed to underpin the innovation. It will also generate the pathway for translation of research and innovation into industry practice, for policy adaptation and public awareness in order to support the increased deployment of ORE technologies, reducing energy costs while increasing energy security, reducing CO2 emissions and supporting UK jobs. The hub will work closely with the ORE Catapult (ORECAT) and become well-connected with industry, government, the wider research community in the UK and internationally. It will bring together these groups to assemble the expertise and experience to define and target the innovations, research and actions to achieve the ambitious energy transformation envisioned for the UK.

The new Supergen ORE hub will continue to support and build on the existing internationally leading academic capacity within these three research areas (OW, wave and tidal technology), whilst also enabling shared learning on common research challenges. The ORE hub will build a multi-disciplinary, collaborative approach, which will bring benefits through the sharing of best practice and exploitation of synergy, support equality and diversity and the development of the next generation of research leaders.

The hub strategy provides an overview of research and innovation priorities, which will be addressed through multiple routes but linked through the hub, with activities designed to stimulate alignment across the research community and industry sectors to maximise engagement with prioritised research challenges through and beyond the hub time-scale. These include:

1. Networking and engagement activities to bring the research community together with industry and other stakeholders to ensure research efforts within the community are aligned, complementary and remain inspired by or relevant to industry challenges. This will include support and development of the ECR community to ensure sustainability and promote EDI within the sector as a whole. Actions will also be taken to identify potential cross over research synergies and opportunities for transfer of research between sectors and disciplines, both within and external to ORE. Furthermore, a structured communication plan built around progress of the community towards the sector research challenges will promote exploitation and commercialisation.

2. A set of core research work packages addressing priority topics selected and structured to maximize progress towards the sector objectives and building on the cross cutting expertise of the co-director team.

3. Targeted use of flexible fund as seed-corn activity leading to projects aligned with, and in partnership with, the hub.

Key Findings
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Organisation Website: http://www.plym.ac.uk