Mr. Yann-Hervé De Roeck, Executive Director of France Energies Marines, and Mr. Cyril Giry, Scientific Director of Energie de la Lune held lectures in our institute on April 23. The conferences were entitled “How France is going to catch up on marine renewable technologies?” and “Hydrokinetic tidal devices in Estuaries: An opportunity to tackle technological and environmental obstacles” separately.
During Mr. De Roeck’s lecture, it was introduced that marine renewable energy has been widely used in terms of tidal energy, wave energy, ocean thermal energy, ocean salinity gradient energy, ocean current energy and so on. Tidal power plant is developed at the earliest with also the most sophisticated technology and largest scale. By far now, France Energies Marines has built diversified offshore marine energy demonstration projects, and carried out prospective study approaches to determine how the market will evolve, technological obstacles, criteria for environmental integration and compatibility of uses.
Mr. De Roeck also made a general introduction of offshore wind resources in France, and showed several large offshore wind turbines that are in use and the related engineering technologies.
Reminding that France possesses the second largest tidal energy resources in Europe, and its first tidal power plant was established in 1966 with world- leading level technology , Mr. Giry gave his report around France fluid power equipment technology of estuarine tidal energy. He shared his experience working in Energie de la Lune with audience and the achievements in tidal energy equipment field in the company. SEENEOH, a tidal estuary experiment site that is under the construction of French Energy Ministry in Bordeaux, was studied as a case.
On the same day the two experts visited the Hubei Province Key Laboratory of Naval Architecture & Ocean Engineering Hydrodynamics in HUST and had meeting with professors from School of Energy and Power Engineering. On April 24, they also visited the Three Gorges Dam in Yichang.
Biography of the two speakers:
Mr. Yann-Hervé De Roeckhas been educated in France as civil engineer (Ecole Polytechnique, Ecole National des Ponts et Chaussées) and applied mathematician (PhD in numerical analysis, University Paris-Dauphine). In 1991, he joined Ifremer, the main French oceanographic research institute, contributing to many numerical modelling programs from composite materials for marine usage to geophysics and coastal oceanography. Since March 2012, he is the Executive Director of France Energies Marines.
Mr. Cyril Giry has been educated in France and UK as engineer in environmental sciences (University of Bordeaux and University of Southampton) and marine sciences (PhD, University of Bremen, Germany). Since 2012, he is the Scientific Director of Energie de la Lune, engineering firm in the field of Marine Renewable Energies and applied oceanography. He provides environmental expertise as consultant and shares his expertise in environmental engineering to assess the feasibility in implementing ocean harnessing systems (tidal and waves devices) on coastal environments, to define specifications for setting up tidal estuarine test site and assessing environmental impacts of tested tidal devices (SEENEOH).
