Aquamarine Power has recently completed its Product Improvement Programme (PIP) on the Oyster 800 wave energy machine involving the replacement of components following battering in winter storms.
The Oyster 800 is located at Billia Croo in Orkney where it forms part of the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC). The machine has proven to be extremely reliable and has survived two winters enduring some massive storms. It recently underwent a major re-fit through the company’s Product Improvement Programme which involved the replacement of accumulators, valves, cables and sub-sea instrumentation connectors. The machine has since been generating power over the last two weeks in a series of controlled tests which are still being conducted.
“We are continuing to test the safety systems of the plant and are slowly building up power production” said Aquamarine Power CEO Martin McAdam. “In 60 hours of operations we have produced 6MWh of power," says Martin McAdam, CEO Aquamarine Power. We averaged about 100kW output and had a peak output of 435kW. Our longest continuous period of controlled power output was 22hours. So far all of the replacement kit on the machine has performed as expected - but it is early days.”
The Oyster 800 began life at Queens University, Belfast, which initiated research on flap-type wave power devices with the aim of reducing the cost of wave energy. This research subsequently led to the development of the Oyster wave device. Aquamarine Power was established in 2005 to bring this technology to market. The prototype machine was completed in 2008 and installed at EMEC in 2009.
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