A new innovative project has been launched to explore the potential of tidal and river energy systems across Northern Europe.
The SHINES project (Showcasing Hydrokinetic energy Innovations for Northwest European Energy Sovereignty) brings together 14 partners from the marine energy industries in France, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany. The project is co-financed by Iterreg North West Europe, an EU-led programme funding sustainable development in the north-west Europe region.
The project’s total budget is €10 million (£8.42 million), of which 60% (€6 million) is being supplied by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Between January 2025 and December 2028, the project will replicate and scale up three innovative marine energy solutions through grid connections and sea deployments in France and the Netherlands.
One of the most significant partners in the project is Inyanga Marine Energy. The company will deploy its HydroWing technology as part of the project, and will design, construct and install a grid-connected 600kW tidal energy turbine at a test site in France’s Paimpol-Bréhat , and will also operate and monitor the device throughout the test period.
Inyanga will also install and maintain another marine energy device at the same site – the TidalKite device from SeaQurrent, for which it will manage all offshore operations. Additionally, ORPC Ireland will be testing its RivGen power system, which generates electricity from river currents, as part of the project.
Inyanga’s marine energy ambitions
In September of last year, Inyanga Marine Energy Group successfully secured a 10MW Contract for Difference (CfD) for its Ynni’r Lleuad 2 scheme located in Morlais, Wales -the largest award given to any tidal energy scheme in AR6. This follows on from the awarding of 10MW for the same project in the previous auction round, AR5. This project will use the same HydroWing technology that will be involved in the SHINES project.
Later that same month, Inyanga completed hydrodynamic testing of the Passive Pitch Unit for the HydroWing system, a key step in launching the system for the Morlais development.
Most recently, the company announced that it had launched a new crowdfunding round to encourage investment in the development of the HydroWing. The funding push, delivered in partnership with equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube, does not specify how the investment will be used, but the company says the project is “highly investible”
