The aim of AQUAWIND is to perform a demonstration test of a multi-use (MU) integrated and co-located solution. This would consist of joining an existing marine renewable energy production Wind to Power (W2Power) prototype in TRL6 with an innovative finfish aquaculture solution in TRL4. The aquaculture prototype will include a tailor-made design fish cage with novel net materials, high level of digitalization and species diversification. Whereas the W2Power will consist of floating wind technology.
This project performs, for the first-time, MU test trials joining marine energy production with live fish aquaculture in the Atlantic region. AQUAWIND joins efforts of a multidisciplinary stakeholders’ consortia including R&D centres, companies, a regional authority and a maritime cluster from three EU members states (FR, ES, PT) in the Atlantic basin. In addition to that, AQUAWIND will involve a wide network of stakeholder throughout all the project phases to ensure social acceptance.
The project will provide a route map for regulatory and legal issues that need to be addressed for real implementation of MU projects, taking advantages, and facilitating interaction with previous and ongoing EU funded projects. Additionally, AQUAWIND will demonstrate how the joint activity can be digitised to be remotely operated in the same maritime space with different fish species and how one activity might affect the other, before going one step further to becoming the new W2Power prototype in a commercial solution.
Thus, AQUAWIND will provide real data to demonstrate the economic, environmental, and social sustainability of the MU proposal: providing a business model case and exploitation plan to evaluate the cost reduction of commissioning, maintenance and operation of the combined activity including the TRL evolution of the prototype. Also, it will provide real data of the monitoring campaign to evaluate the environmental impact in surrounding maritime space following the CO2 footprint.
