On 16 November, the Shetland Times reported that Shetland, an island off the north coast of Scotland, had signed a deal with Vattenfall, which could lead to the community part-owning lucrative wave converter arrays around the islands. According to the local newspaper, the agreement between Vatenfall, the council and Shetland Charitable Trust currently just establishes co-operating and sharing information as the Swedish power company seeks to move forward with its 10-megawatt Aegir wave farm close to the island.
During a press tour in Lerwick, main port of the Shetland Islands, on 15 November, Vattenfall’s Managing Director of ocean energy, Veijo Huusko, suggested however that the islanders might co-invest on a wave energy project at a later stage if wave farms start earning “potentially huge” amounts of money.
In October, Vattenfall revealed its plans of boosting wave energy production off Shetland from the 10MW it plans to install at the Aegir wave farm by 2015, with 14 Pelamis machines, up to 40 MW and then to 100 MW or more after 2023.
ScottishPower launches its Pelamis
November also saw ScottishPower Renewables launching its Pelamis machine to the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in neighbouring Orkney. The Pelamis machine which was constructed for customer ScottishPower Renewables at the Pelamis Wave Power headquarters in Leith, Edinburgh, was successfully tow out of the Firth of Forth and up the east coast of Scotland, before reaching its destination of Lyness, on the island of Hoy, on 7 November.
The machine will be installed at EMEC, alongside another Pelamis converter owned by E.ON, as part of a unique cross-industry collaboration project. The two machines will operate in tandem as a two-machine wave farm, with information gathered from the trials used to support the development of larger commercial-scale projects currently under development by both ScottishPower Renewables and E.ON off the coast of Orkney.
ScottishPower Renewables’ machine is one of the second generation Pelamis P2 machines. The P2 design builds on the extensive experience that Pelamis Wave Power has accumulated over more than ten years through the design, manufacture and operation of four full-scale P1 machines.
The E.ON Pelamis was the first P2 machine to be constructed – this second machine built for ScottishPower Renewables is similar in design and appearance. Both measure 180 metres in length and are 4 metres in diameter. Each of these Pelamis machines is rated at 750kW, and will provide enough power over the course of a year to meet the average electricity demand of 500 homes.
“Scotland is continuing to lead the world in the development of wave and tidal energy, with a quarter of Europe’s tidal stream and a tenth of its wave energy potential. As the last of our WATES funded projects, this is a significant milestone and is evidence that public funding is helping developers exploit that resource, enabling the marine energy sector to go from strength to strength,” commented Scotland’s Energy Minister, Fergus Ewing, at the time. “This latest development further reinforces the growing momentum in marine renewables across Scotland and the breadth of activity taking place at the world-leading European Marine Energy Centre.”
In a separate development, on 25 November, EMEC announced that the Dutch offshore energy company, Bluewater Energy Services, has secured a tidal demonstration berth at the Fall of Warness tidal test site for demonstration of its floating Tidal Energy Converter, BlueTEC. Bluewater has successfully completed its development and design phase including model testing and is now ready to enter the market with a full scale demonstration unit.
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