Deliverable D4.2 “Stage Gate Tools – alpha version” of the DTOceanPlus project includes the details of the Stage Gate Design Tool, and it represents the result of the work developed during task T4.2 of the project. This tool is an application of a stage gate process which is used in research and industry to provide structure to the technology development process. This approach supports the R&D pathway towards producing reliable and cost-effective ocean energy sub-systems, devices and arrays.

The objective of the DTOceanPlus project was to develop a software suite of open source advanced tools for the selection, development and deployment of ocean energy systems. DTOceanPlus project made it to develop and demonstrate an open source sotftware suite of second generation design tools for ocean energy technologies including sub-systems, energy capture devices and arrays. These tools support the entire technology innovation process, from concept, through development, to deployment. More broadly, the project also provided an industry standard for communicating technology descriptions throughout the sector. To complement the numerical work, an extensive market analysis of the ocean energy sector is publicly available.

This document presents the first step in achieving DTOceanPlus project website’s launching.

This document aimed at developing a comprehensive communication plan developed at the beginning of the project in accordance with the overall project management. This plan was an evolving document built on a targeted communication of the DTOceanPluq project results and capitalization on the community. It is the reference framework for evaluating the impact of communication and dissemination activities.

A coherent set of functional and technical requirements have been developed for the DTOcean+ suite of design tools based on analysis of gaps between the current state-of-the-art tools, learning from the original DTOcean project, and the stakeholder expectations identified in the user consultation survey. The technical requirements in this document are translated from the general requirements for the software suite of tools, and specific requirements (functional, operational, user, interfacing, and data) for the assessment tools that will be developed as part of this project.

The objective of Task 4.3 was to carry out the testing of the Stage Gate design tool in order to verify that it meets all the previously defined requirements (in WP2 and T4.1). This report documents the outcome of T4.3 “Verification of the Stage Gate design tool.”

This report provides a critical evaluation of the ocean energy sector’s legal, institutional, and political frameworks with an identification and analysis of barriers and enabling factors for the deployment of ocean energy.

This deliverable is a report documenting the outcome of the work carried out to deliver an overview of the outcomes of the verification tasks since the feedback from the users’ experience will be useful to improve the performance of the tools beyond the project end. The results of the validation scenarios, based on the feedback produced by the partners, will generate useful recommendations for the stakeholders willing to improve global performance of ocean energy arrays, single devices or critical components and subsystems. The work developed throughout the validation tasks will benefit from DTOcean+ tools to perform several activities, articulated in the respective reference validation scenarios, both for wave and tidal energy.

Cost reductions in nascent forms of Renewable Energy Technology (RET) are essential for them to contribute to the energy mix. Policy intervention can facilitate this cost reduction; however, this may require a significant investment from the public sector. These cost reductions fall into two broad categories: (1) incremental cost reductions through continual improvements to existing technologies, and (2) radical innovation where technologies that significantly differ from the incumbents are developed. This study presents a modelling methodology to integrate radical innovation in RET experience curve and learning investment analysis, using wave energy as an example nascent RET. This aims to quantify the potential effects of radical innovation on the learning investment, allowing the value of successful innovation to be better analysed. The study highlights the value offered by radical innovations in long-term deployment scenarios for wave energy. This suggests that high-risk R&D efforts in nascent RET sectors, even with low success rates, could still present significant expected value in offsetting future revenue support.

This deliverable presents the main components of the final and most important result of the project, namely the integrated suite of design tools for ocean energy systems innovation, development and deployment. The toolset includes: installer, catalogues, online documentation and example test cases.