Scottish Government awards £13m to marine energy projects

Greenwise Staff

6th July 2010

The Scottish Government has today unveiled five marine energy projects that are to share £13 million worth of development funding to harness energy from Scotland’s waters.

The five successful bidders have won funding through WATERS, the Wave and Tidal Energy: Research, Development and Demonstration Support programme. They include one of the world's largest wave stations being developed off the Western Isles by RWE npower renewables and a doughnut-shaped wave energy converter being tested in Lock Ness by AWS Ocean Energy.

The grants will help develop these and other emerging energy technologies with the aim of positioning Scotland as global leader in marine power, Scottish Energy Minister Jim Mather said today.

"Our seas have unrivalled potential to generate clean, green energy and bring jobs, investment and know how to Scotland. We have a quarter of Europe's potential tidal energy resource and a tenth of the wave capacity – a resource already drawing developers and innovators to Scotland's seas," he said. "These grants will help attract further private investment."

The biggest grant – £6 million worth – has been awarded to RWE to support construction of a 10 turbine, four megawatt (MW) project off the Western Isles called Siadar.

Aquamarine Power has also benefited from £3.15 million of funding to support demonstration of its Oyster 3 project at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney.

Meanwhile, AWS Ocean Energy which is scale testing its AWS-III wave energy device, a doughnut-shaped, multi-cell surface-floating wave power system, in Loch Ness and the Cromarty Firth has received a £1.39 million grant.

Private investment

Welcoming the funding, Simon Grey, chief executive of Inverness-based AWS Ocean Energy, said the company was "actively seeking" further private investment: "This funding represents a vitally important boost for the development of our AWS-III wave energy device. The current trials on Loch Ness are delivering promising results and we are all very excited by the potential.

"We have seen significant interest in our Loch Ness trials by the major utilities and I believe that our company now presents an exciting prospect for investment by leading industrial companies seeking to exploit the market for wave energy generators."

A single utility-scale AWS-III, measuring around 60 metres in diameter, will be capable of generating up to 2.5 MW of continuous power, the company said. AWS is now seeking industrial and utility partners to enable the launching of a 12-cell, 2.5 MW pre-commercial demonstrator in 2012 and subsequent commercialisation of the technology.

Two other companies also received funding today. OpenHydro, which is developing a power conversion / control system to deliver a cost effective method of connecting marine energy devices in tidal array, won £1.85 million.

Meanwhile, Ocean Flow Energy, which is building the 'Evopod', a 35-kilowatt floating grid connected tidal energy turbine at Sanda Sound in South Kintyre, received £560,000.

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