At project end, the technological innovations will be at a TRL 5 and therefore a number of activities will be needed after the project lifetime in order to have them ready for commercial exploitation (TRL 9), as will be described in the Plan for the Exploitation of results. The Plan will identify, integrate and synchronise individual and joint exploitation plans of the partners in order to accelerate the market uptake of OPERA results, including measures for ensuring appropriate commercial exploitation and replication. The Plan for Exploitation will be updated during the project execution to consider the achievements obtained.

This task will define the exploitation strategy for the exploitation of results and comprises the necessary activities to get the technological innovations into investment readiness. These activities aim to get the OPERA project to a stage where it might be exploited by the project participants themselves or might be attractive for other entities outside the consortium (investors, potential users, companies, etc.).

A preliminary definition of exploitable results has occurred at the proposal stage with the aim of clearly identifying the actors in charge of the main innovations generated. It includes the Wave Energy Converter, Components and sub-systems, control algorithms and project development services for the ocean energy sector.

This task aims at disseminating the project’s goals, progress and final results to the target stakeholders who can directly benefit from the project (i.e. policy makers, public bodies and wave energy value chain). Dissemination activities will address raising awareness and getting the necessary feedback as well as building understanding and facilitating adoption of project results including access to resource, structural, power performance and operating data generated in OPERA. Dissemination activities will be performed at different geographical levels (local, regional and European).

Dissemination activities will be part of the Dissemination and Communication plan, which will include the identification/classification of the target audience (who/what), the dissemination methods (how), the schedule and complementarity of the activities (when), the measures to assess the impact of the dissemination activities, and the conditions to ensure proper dissemination of the generated knowledge, related to confidentiality, publication, and use of the knowledge.

The Dissemination and Communication Plan will be updated during the project execution on annual basis to consider the achievements obtained and, in consequence, the exploitation remarks. Each updated version of the Plan will include a report on those activities already implemented and, at the same time, give an outlook at the dissemination activities foreseen for the next period.

This task aims at proactively promoting the OPERA project and its final results by providing targeted information to various audiences beyond the project own community, including the media and the general public and permitting a two-way exchange. OPERA project target audiences are local policy actors as well as environmental NGOs, citizen organisations, students, women, children and individual citizens.

Public engagement will ensure that the research activities are made known to the society at large in such a way that they can be understood by non-specialists. In particular, communication will address aspects such as the benefits of transnational cooperation in a European Consortium, scientific excellence, impact on everyday lives and contribution to competitiveness and solving societal challenges.

These promotion activities will be a part of the Dissemination and Communication as it has been already described in the previous task. The communication material and visual identity of the project will be developed to support the implementation of the plan and made available on the dedicated website for easy downloading to a wider international audience.