Vattenfall and Pelamis Wave Power launched a joint-venture recently to develop the first wave power project off the Shetland Islands. The joint-venture, called Aegir Wave Power Ltd, will be responsible for seeing Pelamis’ snake-like wave conversion device into the water. It will be built on 150-180 metre long floating "tubes" that move with the waves and generators between the different sections of the “tubes” will transform the movements to electricity.
“The wave power plant on the Shetland Islands is one part of Vattenfall’s objective to produce pure elec-tricity that does not burden our climate or our environment. The ocean west of Shetland has very close to ideal conditions that will enable us to extract energy from the waves effectively,” says Ulf Tisell who is the manager of Vattenfall Ocean Energy Program.
If the requisite planning consents are granted, and the planned Shetland-Scotland sub-sea cable is constructed within the estimated time period, Vattenfall is hoping to have up to 20 MW installed through the project as early as 2014. However, Vatenfall states that “there is potential to expand and achieve much greater capacity, which makes it one of the largest wave power plants on the drawing board in Europe at present”.
For additional information:
