Two-day SCORE meet to support innovation in offshore renewable energy sector

Small-to-medium-sized businesses can showcase their innovations in the offshore renewable energy sector at the two-day SCORE grant programme, called SNS2018, to be held in the East of England, beginning on 28 February.

The event is focused on the Southern North Sea and is organised by the East of England Energy Group.

Over 100 businesses have benefited so far from grants and advice through the multi-million pound Supply Chain Innovation for Offshore Renewable Energy (SCORE) programme, which supports innovation in the offshore renewable energy industry.

Supply Chain Innovation for Offshore Renewable Energy (SCORE) fund has supported a project spend of over £2.6m to help develop inventions that can cut down costs. These innovations range from crawling turbine blade inspection robots to vessel design, undersea cable sensors to communications systems.

So far, the £6m fund has awarded between £2,700 and £50,000 for innovative projects with regard to turbine development and offshore wind farm assembly, installation and construction.

SCORE programme manager Rob Bush said over 400 hours of support had been delivered by its business advisors so far to the startups.

Several of these new projects had also accessed specialist technology support from SCORE’s partner Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult.

Bush added: “We are looking for ideas and solutions for management efficiencies of offshore wind farms as individual assets, operations and maintenance and decommissioning. The industry has done brilliantly cutting its costs by nearly 50% in just two and a half years by innovation and new business models.

“A focus now is on targeting the oil & gas industry for ideas shaped by its experience of long-term offshore asset management, like vessel sharing, vessels staying out at sea longer to save time and money and efficiency ideas to make wind farms more productive with less downtime.”

The East of England has the highest number of new build projects in pipeline in the world. The development of ScottishPower Renewables’ East Anglia Array and Vattenfall’s Norfolk Vanguard and Boreas are a few.

The grants are offered to both start-ups and established companies for up to 40% of eligible costs or £50,000, whichever is the lower. The minimum grant provided by SCORE is £2,500.

SCORE is being partly funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). It provides the grant to companies with less than 250 employees and an annual turnover of less than €50m.