"There is a growing conversation. We have begun the release of the technology much earlier than other countries, but we might now be overtaken by other countries that are investing a lot; It was a whole process in which we evolved, and came from just focusing on technology to also focusing on the market."
“For a long time, Europe has been investing in solar,” says Alejandro Marques of Magallanes Renovables. He’s working on the OCEAN 2G project, which is building a giant ocean platform for tidal energy production. But we're reaching the limit of the number of all of solar panels and windmills that we can install. For example, if you look at Spain, all the solar panels are working at the same time and the excess energy cannot be stored. Whereas with tides, we can predict the tides and we know how strong they will be and therefore how much energy we will produce.”
“Every morning, every evening, the tides rise and fall because of the moon’s gravitational pull on the Earth. That’s not going to change any time soon,” says Gustavo Marcos Cancelas, who is providing OCEAN 2G with exploitation advice under the European Commission’s Horizon Results Booster. “This is merely a dream for other sources of renewable energy.”
“Because we are now at this final stage of development, we have to focus not only on the technology, but also on the market, on the commercialisation and the business development. And we find that we were a little late in doing this because our competitors from other countries – whose solutions are less developed than ours – have been working more on these points,” says Marques.
“We always thought that once we had the technology, we would have the business, of course. But what kind of business, what type would be best? What type of company do we want to be? Do we want to be an energy producer or a technology developer?” says Marques.
“It was a whole process in which we evolved, and came from just focusing on technology to also focusing on the market,” says Marques. “We learned how to market the technology and we gained a better understanding of our strengths. It was very useful to have this guidance from Horizon Results Booster on how to get this done.”
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"The [Booster] services provided invaluable assistance to the consortium by refining KERs, enhancing their applicability and usability, and outlining clear and practical exploitation paths."
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''The collaborative experience with all the involved partners was very fruitful in terms of guiding me on what was expected from Booster services. That was key to deliver a final report that covered their expectations and needs.''
"Horizon Results Booster services were very helpful. It was useful to understand how exploitation could go beyond direct commercialisation. Through these seminars, I realised that in fact it could be applied to many fields."