Offshore wind and tidal energy are very promising renewable sources of power, with much potential to deliver European competitiveness in the green economy. The necessary #preventive maintenance of steel installations exposed to the harsh open sea environment has a large effect on their costs, which is affecting negatively to the optimization of the OPEX cost. The substitution of steel by fibre reinforced polymers (FRP) can offer relevant advantages due to the convenient immunity to corrosion and superior fatigue performance. The FIBREGY project is an innovation action (IA) funded partially by the Horizon 2020 program addresses the different technology gaps to demonstrate the full feasibility of using FRP materials for the construction of platforms for obtaining offshore energy. The two technologies explored in this project can be stated as follows: the semi-submersible W2 Power wind turbine owned by ENEROCEAN, and the TIDETEC tidal energy renewable offshore platform. To achieve this goal, FIBREGY will address the following technical challenges.

• Select the most appropriate composite materials for the construction of offshore platforms using criteria based on the mechanical behavior and cost/performance ratio.
• Analyze the most appropriate manufacturing technologies to manufacture the structural components of the offshore platforms. With the aim to reduce the manufacturing costs, modular construction techniques along with advanced technologies for joining/dismantling the modules will be promoted.
• Design two offshore platforms using the composite materials and manufacturing technologies selected throughout the project. In the design of these platforms, the platforms “TIDETEC TURBINE” and “W2POWER” previously designed in steel will be used as a reference.
• Develop structural health monitoring and maintenance solutions for the structural components of the Floating Offshore Wind Platform.
• Develop design guidelines, as well as recommendations for the construction of the two marine platforms of the project.

In this project, TSI will act as leader of one of the work packages, where it will be in charge of redesigning the fiber-based elements of the tidal power generation device, mainly the housing of the TIDETEC tidal turbine. Apart from that, TSI will be responsible for the development of a structural health monitoring (SHM) system to evaluate the damage state of the fiber-based structural components integrated into the W2Power offshore platform, which are in this case the two towers that link the wind turbines with the semi-submersible. Additionally, TSI will participate in the execution of other tasks corresponding to other work packages such as the development of multifunctional composite materials, as well as the validation of the structural health monitoring systems during the sea trials of the 1:6 scale prototype of the W2Power tower.