£12m innovation centre set for Energy Estuary

A £12m innovation centre is to be built at Bridgehead near the Humber Bridge after the scheme secured another major funding boost.

Aura has secured £4m in funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) to build the Aura Innovation Centre (AIC), as well as provide a programme of innovation support for Humber-based SMEs in the offshore wind and low carbon sectors.

Supported by a further £2.5m from Green Port Hull and £5.5m match funding from the University of Hull, the centre will provide a focus for business to drive innovation through collaboration in the low-carbon energy sector.

Construction on the AIC is expected to start towards the end of 2018 with completion by end 2019.

Recruiting for the AIC team “will start imminently”, said Aura.

Ben George, recently appointed director of Aura, said: “It is often SMEs who are prepared to innovate, think and operate differently. The Aura Innovation Centre, which we are launching today at OWC, is all about encouraging that innovative thinking. It’s about fostering a place where collaboration can happen easily to kick-start the low-carbon energy supply chain here in the Energy Estuary. By bringing together all the different players to develop a robust and sustainable network, we will ensure that the UK continues to lead the way in offshore wind, regionally, nationally and globally.

“The substantial funding that we now have in place to build the Aura Innovation Centre here in the Energy Estuary is the culmination of a vision that the original Aura Partners (the University of Hull, GreenPortHull, the Humber LEP, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Ørsted) had two years ago – which was to see the Energy Estuary as The Hub for offshore wind and low carbon innovation. Since then the Aura partnership has grown and will continue to expand as we seek to collaborate more widely.”

Aura, with support from GreenPortHull, brings together significant expertise in renewable energy through a partnership that includes Ørsted and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, the universities of Hull, Sheffield and Durham, the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult (OREC), CATCH (an industry led training partnership), the National Oceanography Centre and the Humber Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).

In October 2017, the University of Hull and the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult further consolidated the Energy Estuary’s position as a global hub for offshore wind by joining forces to launch a £2m Operations and Maintenance (O&M) Centre of Excellence.

The five-year partnership will develop a series of research and innovation projects to improve the way offshore wind farms are operated and maintained.

The O & M Centre of Excellence will be based in the Aura Innovation Centre.

An Aura collaboration, including the University of Hull, also won a £7.6m funding bid from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to improve the country’s offshore wind power technologies. Led by the University of Sheffield, the five-year programme will address research challenges and will help to reduce the cost of electricity from offshore wind.

Engineering experts from Hull will look at the performance management of turbines to better predict their lifespan, as well as using bone modelling research to design sections of blades to make them lighter and stronger.

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