The First Experiences of Certification of Marine Energy Converters
Authors: Bittencourt Ferreira Claudio , Flinn Jonathan 
Published: July 2010

Certification is well established in the mature industries, ensuring safe and reliable operation through the implementation of the full requirements for design and operation. These requirements are established in Offshore Standards and Recommended Practices which have been developed through extensive experience and research.

For the last few years, with the increased focus on climate change and consequent demand for renewable energy, plus the additional importance of security of energy supply, the marine renewable sector has sprung onto the international scene. As such, the need to accelerate the development of robustness and reliability of technology and to balance this acceleration with a level of risk which is acceptable to the different stakeholders, makes a certification process very important.

Furthermore, the marine renewable sector does not have a transition period as the prototypes are normally deployed in high energy sites offshore, in comparison with the development of Wind Energy which started small and onshore, only moving offshore after a considerable time of experience had been accumulated with the operation of the technology. This fact, in itself, means that even larger investments are required at the early stages, making the control of the risks even more challenging, and this means that certification is essential. Additionally, there is a large diversity of concepts - as opposed to the three-blade concept for the Wind industry - each one having a different set of criteria for success, in terms of both safety and functional requirements, which means it is essential that the certification process in this industry is not prescriptive.

Thus, any certification process has to be able to handle and minimize the risks effectively, while at the same time it can not stifle the development of new technology. The world's first service specification for Certification of Tidal and Wave Energy Converters - DNV-OSS-312 - formalizes the risk-based procedure developed by DNV, and this has been refined in the last few years through interaction with stakeholders and on-going certification projects to satisfy the needs of the sector and stakeholders' demands for a consistent, transparent and traceable scheme for management of risks.

The objective of the process is to produce demonstrable proof that the targets identified as essential for success of the energy converter were achieved (or are likely to be achieved depending on the phase of the project). This demonstration is achieved by dealing with the new technology, uncertainties and lack of data as well as transferring safety and reliability targets from other industries.

The application of an existing and well established procedure - Qualification of New Technology - to the wave and tidal energy industry allows the new aspects of the technology to be identified, and the associated risks can be highlighted so that they can be monitored and minimized in the analysis and testing phase.

At the same time, it does make economical and technological sense to adapt and transfer technology from other relevant sectors such as Offshore and Maritime using existing standards and recommended practices as far as possible to manage the risks involved to ensure that internationally acceptable safety levels are achieved and to take advantage of the strong and wellprepared supply chain serving these industries.