Tidal turbine blades will be scaled up by 70% in swept area and tested across 120,000 hours of rotor performance data from an 8-blade, 5MW tidal array. Tidal stream energy has struggled to attract investment because turbine blades remain too small, unreliable, and expensive to maintain. The MAXBlade project tackles these problems together—design, condition monitoring, maintenance, and control—rather than addressing them piecemeal. It also confronts a looming regulatory requirement: tidal turbine blades must eventually be recyclable, yet current composite blades are not. If successful, the project aims to cut the cost of tidal stream energy by €30 per megawatt-hour, making it competitive with other renewables. The work on recyclable thermoplastic resins could shift blade manufacturing toward circular economy principles, reducing composite waste in the energy sector. By building a full tidal array and verifying performance over years, the project also generates the kind of operational data that investors and insurers demand before committing to large-scale deployments. The European composite manufacturing supply chain stands to gain a lead in tidal blade production, provided the project identifies and removes barriers to scaling up supplier capacity.
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The MAXBlade project will specifically focus on delivering a 70% increase in rotor swept area of the technology by addressing design, reliability, condition monitoring, maintenance and control issues relating to tidal turbine blades. All of these issues have to date been insufficiently addressed for tidal turbine blades and need to be holistically tackled to reach a site-averaged €30/MWh cost reduction in tidal stream energy, while maturing the technology to address barriers around investment attractiveness. The project also anticipates significant challenges and expected legislative requirements around applying circular economy principles to tidal stream turbine blades in pursuit of a net zero generation sector. With a close interface between blade design and testing activities, the project addresses a comprehensive circular economy roadmap for tidal turbine blades, including advancing the potential of recyclable thermoplastic resins for use in the composite blades. The project also progresses initiatives to ensure that the European composite sectors become the international leader in tidal blade manufacture through knowledge transfer, practical engagement in the blade production design and identifying and addressing barriers to increasing European supplier capacity. The project will consist of a 2-year design and development phase, an 18- month build, followed by a 2-year performance verification through the build of a tidal array of at least two units (c. 5MW), ensuring that 8 blades (4 rotors) are tested providing cumulatively 120,000 hours of rotor performance data.
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