From Prototype to Repeatable Project: Reflections on a Recurring Theme from ICOE-OEE 2026
One of the things I enjoy most about industry events is that, after a while, you stop focusing solely on individual presentations and begin noticing the themes that seem to connect them.
Those themes rarely emerge as a single headline. More often they reveal themselves gradually through conference sessions, conversations over coffee and pastries, discussions at exhibition stands and sometimes even over dinner and drinks long after the formal programme has finished. Different people describe different challenges in different ways, yet somehow many of those conversations seem to circle around the same underlying questions.
That was certainly my experience at ICOE-OEE 2026 in The Hague.
As this was my first opportunity since joining Blackfish to spend several days fully immersed in the ocean energy sector, I arrived expecting much of the discussion to focus on technology development itself. There was certainly no shortage of conversations about innovation, performance, testing and deployment. Yet I left with the impression that many organisations are increasingly wrestling with a challenge that sits beyond technology alone.
Indeed, one of the things that surprised me most was how often conversations eventually moved away from the technology itself and towards a much broader discussion about what comes next.
While there is still plenty of work being done to prove and improve emerging technologies, the question no longer appears to be simply whether ocean energy technologies can work.
Increasingly, the question seems to be how those technologies become practical, repeatable commercial projects.
The more conversations I had throughout the week, the more important that distinction began to feel.
A successful demonstration remains a significant achievement. It provides evidence, confidence, credibility and, perhaps most importantly, learning. It can represent years of engineering effort, substantial investment and countless difficult decisions.
Demonstration projects are essential because they help move technologies forward and provide proof that concepts can function in the real world.
However, one theme that surfaced repeatedly throughout ICOE-OEE was that a successful demonstration does not automatically answer every question that needs to be addressed before a technology can be deployed repeatedly and commercially.
Can it be manufactured consistently?
Can it be installed efficiently?
Can it be maintained cost-effectively?
Can it achieve the levels of reliability that future operators, investors and customers will expect?
Can it be deployed again and again without requiring extensive redesign or bespoke engineering each time?
These are not necessarily the same questions that a demonstration programme is designed to answer, yet they often become increasingly important as technologies mature.
Several presentations approached this challenge from different angles.
Some focused on validation and verification, examining the inevitable gap that exists between what engineering models predict and what is ultimately observed when equipment is exposed to the realities of the offshore environment. Others explored how development decisions made during relatively early stages of a project can have significant implications for future costs, performance and commercial viability. There were discussions around techno-economic modelling, operational expenditure, maintenance philosophies, deployment strategies and industrialisation pathways.
Different speakers used different language and different examples, but I found myself repeatedly returning to a similar conclusion.
Engineering decisions and commercial outcomes appear to be much more closely linked than they are sometimes discussed.
A decision made during concept development may influence maintenance requirements years later. Maintenance requirements affect vessel usage, operational expenditure and availability. Those factors in turn influence project economics, investor confidence and ultimately whether a project is commercially attractive.
What begins as an engineering decision can eventually become a commercial one.
This was particularly evident in discussions surrounding operations and maintenance. Several speakers highlighted the importance of understanding how technologies will actually be installed, operated, maintained and recovered throughout their operational lives. More than once, I heard variations of the idea that performance alone is rarely enough. Reliability, maintainability and operational practicality matter enormously.
In some cases, the conversations suggested that the economics of a project may be heavily influenced by decisions that are made long before anybody produces a final levelised cost of energy calculation. Questions around maintenance access, vessel availability, weather windows, component replacement and operational flexibility can all have significant downstream consequences.
What struck me was not necessarily that these ideas are new. Most experienced engineers and developers understand them already. Rather, it was how consistently they appeared across different technologies, different organisations and different stages of development.
The reality of the marine environment was another recurring theme.
Concept designs can look elegant on paper. Simulations can be highly sophisticated. Tank-testing programmes can provide valuable insight. Yet eventually every device encounters the realities of corrosion, biofouling, accessibility, weather, logistics, maintenance and human operation. The ocean has a habit of exposing assumptions that may have seemed entirely reasonable during the design process.
This is not an argument against modelling, simulation or testing. Quite the opposite. They remain fundamental to technology development. However, several speakers made the point, either directly or indirectly, that the objective is not necessarily to eliminate uncertainty entirely. The objective is to understand uncertainty sufficiently well to make informed decisions.
That perspective resonated with me because it felt applicable beyond purely technical challenges.
If there was one broader lesson I took away from the week, it was that commercialisation itself is a process of reducing uncertainty.
Investors seek confidence in future performance. Operators seek confidence in reliability. Project developers seek confidence in economics. Regulators seek confidence in evidence. Supply chains seek confidence in future demand.
The technologies themselves are only one part of that picture.
Throughout the conference there were discussions about funding, market mechanisms, infrastructure, policy support, utilities, industrial partnerships and future project pipelines. None of these topics exist independently from technology development. Instead, they appeared to form part of a wider system that ultimately determines whether successful demonstrations evolve into repeatable deployment.
Perhaps that is why the concept of repeatability kept resurfacing in my notes. By the end of the week, I had written some version of the word repeatedly in different sessions, often without realising it at the time. The technology, funding model, geography and speaker might have changed, but the underlying challenge often seemed remarkably similar.
The sector already contains examples of impressive engineering achievements and successful demonstrations. The challenge many organisations appear to be considering now is how those successes can be repeated efficiently, economically and at greater scale.
That process requires more than technical performance alone.
It requires confidence in manufacturing, confidence in deployment methodologies, confidence in operations and maintenance strategies, confidence in reliability and confidence that projects can move beyond one-off successes and become something more systematic.
For Blackfish, this was particularly interesting because many of the conversations we had throughout the week centred not on individual components but on wider questions around validation, testing, engineering risk, deployment readiness, maintainability and operational learning. In many cases, organisations appeared less interested in additional engineering resource and more interested in understanding which decisions needed to be made next and what evidence was required to support them.
After several days in The Hague, I certainly did not leave with all the answers. If anything, in the best possible way, I left with more questions than when I arrived. However, one observation continues to stand out.
The future success of ocean energy may depend just as much on creating repeatable projects as it does on creating successful technologies.
The two are clearly connected, but they are not quite the same thing.
Whether that interpretation proves accurate over the coming years remains to be seen, and I would be genuinely interested to hear alternative perspectives. However, looking back through my notes from the week, it is undoubtedly the theme I returned to more than any other.
The sector already contains examples of remarkable innovation, engineering expertise and successful demonstrations. The challenge now may be less about proving technologies can work and more about proving they can be repeated, reliably and economically, in ways that build confidence among operators, investors, utilities and supply chains.
For me, that was one of the most interesting conversations taking place across the entire event, and one I suspect I will continue returning to long after ICOE-OEE 2026.
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