Marine and Renewable Energy Test Site
SmartBay is Ireland’s national marine test and demonstration facility for the development of innovative products and services for the global maritime sector. The test site is located 4.5km east of Spiddal in County Galway approximately 1.5km offshore. The test site is suitable for developers wishing to undertake low-cost sea trials and validation of devices and components at various technology readiness levels.
facilities and support include:
Technology Platforms
technology platforms
Mobilis DB8000 buoys are currently in use for testing and validating a range of novel sensors and to efficiently gather metocean time series data. The buoys can host a variety of communications protocols to shore including; GPRS, Satellite, VHF, Wimax, GSM, 3G and Wi-Fi. These services allow simple high-speed backhaul connectivity for devices located in, or near the test site.
The buoys 3G HPSA+ communications include download speeds up to 21Mbps, and uploads speeds up to 5.76Mbps, taking advantage of nearby next generation mobile sites.
Buoys can have single, bridle, or multipoint moorings through the hull compartment facilitating diverse and easily adaptable deployment solutions depending on user specific requirements. The data buoys allow for the trial and validation of a variety of sensors and can generate autonomous power including Solar PV and Wind Power harvesting to power multiple sensor payloads
Subsea Observatory
A sub-sea cabled observatory is deployed at the site, and is powered by a hybrid optical/electrical cable. The observatory can provide power to, and receive data from, up to three Ocean Energy devices (1.2kW per device). Several optical and electrical connectivity options are available with a number of permanent sensors and a high definition camera installed for monitoring
The sub-sea cabled observatory includes:
- A fibre optic data and 400v power cable
- High speed communications via 4 pairs of optical fibres
- A sub-sea cabled sensor platform which hosts a variety of sensors and equipment which can be tested and demonstrated in near real-time.
The observatory hosts 23 science ports, of these 23 ports:
- 4 are optical
- 18 electrical (Serial or Ethernet) of which 10 will be dedicated to the test and demonstration of new and novel equipment
- 1 coaxial port supporting a high definition camera.
The cabled observatory hosts the following sensors on a permanent basis:
- Conductivity, Temperature and Depth
- Dissolved Oxygen
- Combined Turbidity and Fluorescence sensor
- Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler
- High frequency hydrophone
- Acoustic fish tag detector