Tips & Tricks for a successful HORIZON-CL5-2027-02-D3-09 proposal
Opening
03 December 2026
Deadline
Keywords
wave energy
tidal energy
ocean energy
SET Plan
IA
cascade funding
biodiversity
optimized control
competitive energy supply
next-gen power
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HORIZON-CL5-2027-02-D3-09: Innovative technologies and solutions to improve wave and tidal energy systems
How does offshore access shape the design of wave and tidal energy systems?
Offshore access determines how quickly a failed component can be repaired and electricity generation restored. A short repair can still cause prolonged downtime if suitable vessels or safe sea conditions are unavailable. Maintainability therefore includes access, disconnection, retrieval and return to service, alongside the repair itself. This makes maintenance strategy an early design choice for HORIZON-CL5-2027-02-D3-09, which seeks cost-effective wave and tidal systems that remain robust throughout installation, operation and decommissioning.
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Administrative facts: what do we know about the HORIZON-CL5-2027-02-D3-09 call?
Which call is it, and when is the opening and the deadline?
- Call name: Batteries and Energy
- Call identifier: HORIZON-CL5-2027-02
- Destination: Sustainable, secure and competitive energy supply
- Topic: HORIZON-CL5-2027-02-D3-09
- Opening: 03 December 2026
- Deadline: 31 March 2027, 17:00:00 Brussels time
- Type of action: Innovation Action
What about the budget and estimated size of the project?
- Topic budget: EUR 43.00 million
- Projects expected: 1
- EU contribution per project: around EUR 43.00 million
- Demonstration challenge: capped at EUR 24 million
- FSTP: up to EUR 3 million (breakthrough), up to EUR 6 million (validation)
- Maximum per third party: EUR 800 000
- Project management: 7% of EU funding maximum
- Duration: around 5 years
What are the key eligibility and evaluation conditions?
- Thresholds: General Annex D, no exception declared
- Page limit raised to 60 pages
- TRL 6 to 7 by the end, any starting TRL
- Copernicus and/or Galileo/EGNOS mandatory if satellite data is used
- Financial support to third parties is compulsory, grants only
- Advisory Board required, including SET Plan Ocean Energy and Commission representatives
Scientific range: what does the Commission expect from the HORIZON-CL5-2027-02-D3-09 grant?
What outcomes are expected?
Devices that survive, produce, and cost less. The Commission is after hardware in the water and progress against SET Plan targets, not another round of concept studies. Fragmentation is the second target, so alignment across the European ocean energy community counts too.
What is within scope?
- Innovative wave devices and next generation tidal devices, demonstrated in a controlled environment
- Sustainable materials for converters, moorings and foundations, with structural integrity and circularity kept in view
- Moorings and transmission: combined mooring and electrical connectors, shared anchors in arrays, quick connection without divers
- Condition monitoring and predictive maintenance instrumentation, including AI
- Advanced manufacturing, installation, maintenance, decommissioning
Controlled environment means test tanks, semi-enclosed basins, or instrumented sea sites. Open water trials with no monitoring plan won’t qualify.
What are the specifically proposed research directions?
- Three challenges structure the work: breakthrough, validation, demonstration
- At least three demonstration activities, clearly different, each with a go/no go milestone
- Before that milestone: permits, engineering plans, a full business plan
- Stage gate metrics from IEA OES Task 12, plus SET Plan KPI reporting
- Two waves of cascade calls, breakthrough in year one, validation later
The work programme lists these areas without ranking them. Our reading: moorings, connectors and monitoring are where the cost curve actually moves.
Scientific strategy: how can you enhance your chances of being funded through HORIZON-CL5-2027-02-D3-09?
What scientific choices matter most?
- Pick demonstrations that can realistically get permits. Consenting timelines sink ocean energy projects more often than engineering does.
- Put the stage gate framework in the proposal, not in a future deliverable. Europewave normalised this, evaluators will look for it.
- Survivability evidence beats efficiency curves here.
- Keep the three demonstrations genuinely different. Two variants of one converter read as a single demonstration with a spare.
- Budget the FSTP work properly (this one catches people off guard). Two cascade schemes over five years is a job, not a task.
- The topic asks for TRL 6 to 7. What evaluators respond to is a credible route to a grid connected unit, not a tidy TRL claim.
Consortium & proposal-writing plan: what works best with this type of call?
- Somewhere between twelve and twenty partners, more if you cover several sea basins
- Device developers, materials suppliers, test centres, a utility or offshore contractor, marine ecologists
- At least one beneficiary with proven cascade funding experience, evaluators will check this
- Innovative SMEs matter twice here: inside the core consortium, and as the audience for your FSTP calls
- If your test site is not in the consortium, secure written access before submission. Marinerg-i and RISEnergy are named in the topic.
- Sixty pages feels generous until you add FSTP procedures, the risk plan and three demonstrations.
How should wave and tidal technologies be validated before deployment?
Validate each technology against a defined baseline, using criteria suited to its intended marine application. For each claimed improvement, specify the operating conditions, measurement method, uncertainty and acceptance threshold. Useful criteria include conversion performance, structural loads, durability, maintenance effort or installation time.
Under this topic, validation and demonstration should take place under monitored and reproducible conditions. Test rigs, tanks, semi-enclosed basins and dedicated sea sites with instrumented monitoring are all possible settings. A sea trial therefore needs a measurement plan that makes its conditions and results interpretable.
The work programme requires IEA Ocean Energy Systems (OES) Task 12 stage-gate assessment across all research and innovation activities, including work supported through financial support to third parties. Each demonstration is expected to have a go/no-go milestone before deployment. Before that milestone, the necessary permits, complete engineering plans compliant with applicable standards, and a complete business and implementation plan must be in place
Assess relevant environmental effects alongside technical performance, with monitoring suited to the technology, site and biodiversity at risk.
The MIC already brings its expertise in microfluidics to Horizon Europe:
H2020-NMBP-TR-IND-2020
Microfluidic platform to study the interaction of cancer cells with lymphatic tissue
H2020-LC-GD-2020-3
Toxicology assessment of pharmaceutical products on a placenta-on-chip model
About the author
Julia Sepulveda Diaz, PhD
Chief Executive Officer, Microfluidics Innovation Center
Julia holds a PhD in glycobiology and neurobiology from Université Paris-Est Créteil. Before moving into microfluidics, she spent several years as a postdoctoral researcher at the Paris Brain Institute, on Parkinson’s disease, neuroinflammation, and the role of heparan sulfate in protein aggregation. Today she leads the Microfluidics Innovation Center as CEO, steering its researchers and engineers and its collaborative research and innovation projects.
FAQ - HORIZON-CL5-2027-02-D3-09
Practical questions about performance evidence, testing limits and environmental assessment for wave and tidal energy systems.
How do reliability, survivability and availability differ?
Reliability concerns functioning as required over time; survivability concerns withstanding damaging events; availability concerns readiness for operation. A device may survive a storm yet remain unavailable while awaiting inspection or repair. The IEA OES evaluation framework distinguishes these dimensions when assessing ocean-energy technologies.
Does higher conversion efficiency necessarily reduce electricity cost?
No. Electricity cost also depends on equipment, installation, maintenance, lifetime and energy actually delivered. A more efficient converter may still be more expensive overall if repairs or downtime increase. Compare alternatives using consistent system boundaries and assumptions, following the IEA OES affordability framework.
What can a wave-tank test establish before sea trials?
A wave-tank test can characterise model-scale power conversion, motion and loads under selected wave conditions. Its conclusions remain tied to the model, facility and test programme. IEC TS 62600-103:2024 addresses early wave-device testing; its scope does not include commercial-scale prototype tests.
Can one testing protocol cover both wave and tidal devices?
Not without adaptation. Wave tests and tidal-current tests need different representations of the energy resource and device response. IEC TS 62600-202:2022 addresses early tidal-converter development, including currents, waves and wind in open-water trials. Select the protocol for the technology, scale and test objective.
What information should accompany a reported power measurement?
Report the resource conditions, device configuration, measurement location and averaging period, together with calibration and uncertainty information. Without that context, differences in output can reflect different tests rather than better technology. Early-stage wave testing explicitly connects device and environment characterisation with defined performance goals.
What should testing of a mooring or connector demonstrate?
It should test the claimed benefit at the relevant interface: for example, load resistance, connection time or safe disconnection. The topic’s mooring and connection scope includes shared anchors and combined power connections. Assess these configurations as connected systems, including the equipment and procedures needed to operate them.
What evidence should support a predictive-maintenance claim?
Connect an early fault warning to an actionable maintenance decision. Compare warnings with confirmed component condition, and report false alarms, missed faults and warning time. For the predictive-maintenance technologies covered by this topic, distinguish estimated downtime reductions from improvements actually observed during operation.
What makes a materials comparison meaningful for ocean-energy equipment?
Compare materials performing the same function under relevant loading and marine exposure. Include fabrication, inspection, repair and end-of-life options in the assessment. The topic’s sustainable-materials scope combines structural integrity, durability and circularity; a favourable result for one property does not establish an overall improvement.
Which environmental interactions should a monitoring plan consider?
Select interactions relevant to the device and site, such as underwater noise, habitat change, electromagnetic fields or collision risk around tidal turbines. Identify the species or habitats potentially exposed and the observations needed to assess effects. The OES-Environmental guidance distinguishes these interactions rather than prescribing one universal monitoring package.
Can observations around one device establish the effects of a larger array?
Not on their own. Different environmental interactions can change differently as deployment expands. A larger array may require assessment of combined effects on habitats and ecosystem processes, alongside other marine activities. OES-Environmental’s systems-wide assessment explains why single-device evidence needs a separate scaling assessment.