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OpenHydro, the Irish based tidal energy company and part of DCNS Energies, has appointed Mr Patrick Gougeon as their new Chief Executive Officer. The appointment signals the company’s ongoing drive towards commercialisation of its tidal technology and follows the launch of DCNS Energies, a subsidiary of the DCNS Group which recently secured €100m in investment.

Mr Gougeon joined OpenHydro at the start of January 2017, having previously held the position of CEO of Colibrys, a high-technology industrial company based in Switzerland. He is an engineer from the French Ecole Centrale de Lille and holds an MBA from the HEC School of Management in Paris.

With over twenty years’ experience in delivering global technological projects and transforming organizations in the industrial sector, Mr Gougeon’s senior management career to date has encompassed roles including consultancy in strategy and organisation in McKinsey & Company, as well as change management, international business development, industrial and program management as a successful executive in the Thales and Safran groups.

Thierry Kalaquin, Senior Vice President of Energies at DCNS, said: “We are delighted to be welcoming Patrick to this role, following a successful year in 2016, which saw us deliver significant tidal technology development. We now look forward to moving towards a fully commercial tidal energy solution and servicing our global portfolio of projects.”

Operating out of OpenHydro’s Dublin offices and its Technical Centre in Greenore, Co. Louth, Mr Gougeon heads up a business that has strong plans to expand both locally and internationally.
Commenting on his appointment, Patrick Gougeon said: “I am really looking forward to taking up the challenge to lead OpenHydro’ s team during this exciting phase of its’ evolution. My immediate focus is to ensure that we are well placed for the next stage of growth and opportunities that lie ahead, with the right people, organization, technology and partners in place.”

Published in Power From the Sea
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James Ives, CEO at tidal energy company OpenHydro will speaking tomorrow at the Ocean Energy Europe Conference being held this week in Croke Park in Dublin. Ives will tell how the Irish marine renewable firm is to be the global leader in tidal solutions, profitably delivering economic marine renewable energy.

The Department of Communications says that €4.5m. will be allocated to ocean energy research in Ireland under Budget provisions next year. Total allocation for energy efficiency and renewable energy onshore and offshore next year is €68m. €9 million is being provided for geoscience initiatives including the INFOMAR and TELLUS programmes, which will support expanded geoscience research in Ireland’s offshore and onshore.

OpenHydro, a DCNS company, based in Ireland, is a technology business that designs and manufactures marine turbines to generate renewable energy from tidal streams. The company's vision is to deploy farms of tidal turbines under the world's oceans - silently and invisibly generating electricity at no cost to the environment. OpenHydro's technology enables the ocean's immense energy to be harnessed for the benefit of all. The electricity produced is completely renewable since it relies on tides that are created by the gravitational effect of the sun and moon. Through this innovative technology, OpenHydro will extract energy from the oceans in an economically viable and environmentally sensitive manner.

OpenHydro has developed the innovative Open-Centre Turbine technology which is a shrouded, horizontal-axis turbine. Simplicity is the key advantage of this technology: manufactured from a small number of components and with only one single moving part (the rotor). There is no need for oils, seals or a gearbox and this not only reduces the requirement for maintenance but ensures reliable performance in the harsh environment that is the World’s oceans. The turbines, each supported on a subsea structure, are placed directly onto the seabed, deep enough so as not to pose a hazard to shipping traffic overhead and the standard OpenHydro product has a diameter of 16m and is rated at 2MW. OpenHydro has also developed a patented method to install the Open-Centre Turbines, allowing all deployments to be completed in a single tidal cycle; less than 6 hours.

OpenHydro is at the fore-front of the tidal industry, with nearly one gigawatt of development in progress across multiple sites in Europe and North America. 

Published in Power From the Sea
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#OpenHydro - The Irish Times has a report on OpenHydro's new €600 million deal with a Channel Islands company that's set to establish one of Europe's biggest renewable energy schemes.

Dublin-based hydro-power firm OpenHydro - which earlier this year gave a controlling stake to French naval defence giant DCNS for a €130 million investment - has teamed up with Alderney Renewable Energy to set up a new company called Race Tidal that aims to generate 300MW of power for export to Britain and France.

The project would take advantage of the strong tidal waters off Alderney, the northernmost of the Channel Islands, which OpenHydro CFO Peter Corcoran says have a potential capacity of 3GW.

The long-term project requires obtaining all necessary permits, expected to take four years, followed by two more years of construction and installation of OpenHydro's turbines.

The Irish Times has more on the story HERE.

Published in Power From the Sea

Sharks in Irish waters

Irish waters are home to 71 species of shark, skates and rays, 58 of which have been studied in detail and listed on the Ireland Red List of Cartilaginous fish. Irish sharks range from small Sleeper sharks, Dogfish and Catsharks, to larger species like Frilled, Mackerel and Cow sharks, all the way to the second largest shark in the world, the Basking shark. 

Irish waters provide a refuge for an array of shark species. Tralee Bay, Co. Kerry provides a habitat for several rare and endangered sharks and their relatives, including the migratory tope shark, angel shark and undulate ray. This area is also the last European refuge for the extremely rare white skate. Through a European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) project, Marine Institute scientists have been working with fishermen to assess the distribution, diversity, and monthly relative abundance of skates and rays in Tralee, Brandon and Dingle Bays.

“These areas off the southwest coast of Ireland are important internationally as they hold some of the last remaining refuges for angel shark and white skate,” said Dr Maurice Clarke of the Marine Institute. “This EMFF project has provided data confirming the critically endangered status of some species and provides up-to-date information for the development of fishery measures to eliminate by-catch.” 

Irish waters are also home to the Black Mouthed Catshark, Galeus melastomus, one of Ireland’s smallest shark species which can be found in the deep sea along the continental shelf. In 2018, Irish scientists discovered a very rare shark-nursery 200 nautical miles off the west coast by the Marine Institute’s ROV Holland 1 on a shelf sloping to 750 metres deep. 

There are two ways that sharks are born, either as live young or from egg casings. In the ‘case’ of Black Mouthed Catsharks, the nursery discovered in 2018, was notable by the abundance of egg casings or ‘mermaid’s purses’. Many sharks, rays and skate lay eggs, the cases of which often wash ashore. If you find an egg casing along the seashore, take a photo for Purse Search Ireland, a citizen science project focusing on monitoring the shark, ray and skate species around Ireland.

Another species also found by Irish scientists using the ROV Holland 1 in 2018 was a very rare type of dogfish, the Sail Fin Rough Shark, Oxynotus paradoxus. These sharks are named after their long fins which resemble the trailing sails of a boat, and live in the deep sea in waters up to 750m deep. Like all sharks, skates and rays, they have no bones. Their skeleton is composed of cartilage, much like what our noses and ears are made from! This material is much more flexible and lighter than bone which is perfect for these animals living without the weight of gravity.

Throughout history sharks have been portrayed as the monsters of the sea, a concept that science is continuously debunking. Basking sharks were named in 1765 as Cetorhinus maximus, roughly translated to the ‘big-nosed sea monster’. Basking sharks are filter feeders, often swimming with their mouths agape, they filter plankton from the water.

They are very slow moving and like to bask in the sun in shallow water and are often seen in Irish waters around Spring and early Summer. To help understand the migration of these animals to be better able to understand and conserve these species, the Irish Basking Shark Group have tagged and mapped their travels.

Remarkably, many sharks like the Angel Shark, Squatina squatina have the ability to sense electricity. They do this via small pores in their skin called the ‘Ampullae of Lorenzini’ which are able to detect the tiny electrical impulses of a fish breathing, moving or even its heartbeat from distances of over a kilometre! Angel sharks, often referred to as Monkfish have a distinctively angelic shape, with flattened, large fins appearing like the wings of an angel. They live on the seafloor in the coastal waters of Ireland and much like a cat are nocturnal, primarily active at night.

The intricate complexity of shark adaptations is particularly noticeable in the texture of their skin. Composed of miniscule, perfectly shaped overlapping scales, the skin of shark provides them with protection. Often shark scales have been compared to teeth due to their hard enamel structure. They are strong, but also due to their intricate shape, these scales reduce drag and allow water to glide past them so that the shark can swim more effortlessly and silently. This natural flawless design has been used as inspiration for new neoprene fabric designs to help swimmers glide through the water. Although all sharks have this feature, the Leafscale Gulper Shark, Centrophorus squamosus, found in Ireland are specifically named due to the ornate leaf-shape of their scales.