Concept Design involves coordination of all project works towards generating knowledge to feed into the design and development of the LiftWEC system. To help provide guidance to the other work streams, Deliverable D2.1 “Preliminary Report on Synthesis of Design Knowledge” has been produced which identifies the key points of design knowledge which must be generated in order to develop an understanding of the LiftWEC system’s characteristics and design requirements. In addition, Deliverable D2.2 “Identification of Evaluation Criteria” which outlines the evaluation criteria which are proposed for use during assessment of potential LiftWEC configurations.

In order to provide an opportunity for all work streams to highlight the importance of their particular facet of design and to come together to develop the Preliminary LiftWEC Configurations, the first Project Workshop was held in May 2020. This provided the opportunity for interdisciplinary discussions and collaboration from an early stage in system development.

Furthermore, a literature review of pre-existing lift-based Wave Energy Converters was presented in Deliverable D2.3 “Review of current Lift-based WEC concepts and specification of preliminary configuration” which also reported on the outcome from the first LiftWEC Project Workshop. At present, work on the Concept Design is focused on the development of a suite of Concept Design and Concept Evaluation support tools which will be used throughout the project to investigate the characteristics if lift-based Wave Energy Converters and assess the performance of potential LiftWEC systems.