IDEA-IRL Podcast

Val Cummins, Chief Impact Officer and Board Director of Simply Blue, gives us her take on the current state of the FLOW sector and what’s required for Ireland to achieve our national ambitions to decarbonise the economy.

Flotation Energy who's founders developed the Kincardine floating offshore wind farm, which is the world’s largest grid connected floating project made up of 8 9.5MW turbines. We hear from Allan Mac Askill, Chief Technical Officer, Flotation Energy and Barrie McMullin who is Flotation Energy’s Project Manager for the Irish projects. Our guests share their experience in the sector, future targets and key challenges to the large-scale roll out of FLOW.

Wet storage and its relation to floating off shore wind energy is the talking topic of today. Given Ireland's goal of establishing large-scale floating offshore wind energy projects and the limitations imposed by offshore weather, research on "wet storage" looks into the benefits it offers to accelerate installation times and support floating wind turbine long-term operation and maintenance. Postdoctoral researcher at MaREI, UCC, Ross O'Connell is here to give an insight to the current status of wet storage for floating offshore wind, what constitutes a suitable location for its implementation, and how it's going to be rolled out in Ireland.

Marine spatial planning the first key step in building off shore wind farms. To delve into deeper is Principal Officer at the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority (MARA) Rory O'Leary who has over 20 years experience in the industry. Fiona and Rory discuss the planning process and the need to ensure off shore wind farms are implemented in maritime areas meet criteria that deliver all the while considering maritime environments.The IDEA-IRL project is funded by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI). See IDEA-IRL website for further details; follow us on LinkedIn; email IDEA-IRL@ucc.ie; sign up to our IDEA-IRL mailing list.Disclaimer: We do our best to ensure the information in our discussions is accurate and up to date; however, please bear in mind that discussions are based on the current opinions and assumptions of the interviewer and guests using the information available at the time of recording. Therefore, we cannot guarantee accuracy and listeners should verify information independently.

To kickstart the podcast series we have Greg Bohan senior off shore consultant at Gavin & Doherty Geosolutions to give an insight to the floating off shore wind industry, to breakdown what exactly off shore floating wind turbines are, what stage Ireland is at with it's introduction of floating off shore wind and what are the main challenges with their introduction to Irish seas.The IDEA-IRL project is funded by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI). See IDEA-IRL website for further details; follow us on LinkedIn; email IDEA-IRL@ucc.ie; sign up to our IDEA-IRL mailing list.Disclaimer: We do our best to ensure the information in our discussions is accurate and up to date; however, please bear in mind that discussions are based on the current opinions and assumptions of the interviewer and guests using the information available at the time of recording. Therefore, we cannot guarantee accuracy and listeners should verify information independently.