A leading power company and a UK marine energy specialist have joined forces with plans to deploy the first tidal farm off the coast of Wales.
RWE Npower Renewables has partnered with
Marine Current Turbines (MCT), the Bristol-based company behind the
SeaGen tidal turbine. They have formed
SeaGeneration Wales, a company that plans to install a 10-megawatt (MW)
tidal stream turbine array off the North West coast of Anglesey at cost of £70 million. An application for consent was submitted this week to the Welsh Assembly Government. If successful it will mark the first tidal array to be deployed in
Wales.
Marine energy potential
Tidal and wave energy is developing rapidly as a commercially viable sector in the UK and the Government estimates as many as 15 million homes could be powered by wave and tidal power by 2050.
The Seageneration Wales project aims to be up and running by 2015 and will be large enough to power over 10,000 homes on Anglesey. It will consist of seven SeaGen twin rotor turbines spread across an area covering 0.56 kilometres (km) between the Skerries islands and Carmel Head, about 1km off the Anglesey coast.
SeaGen technology
MCT designed and deployed the world’s first commercial scale offshore tidal stream energy system in Northern Ireland’s Strangford Lough in December 2008. Its Seagen turbine works much like an underwater windmill with the rotors driven by the power of the tidal currents rather than the wind.
Other projects
This time last year, the Crown Estate awarded 1.2 gigawatts of wave and tidal energy project leases in the UK, including one to MCT to install 66 SeaGen tidal turbines in off Brough Ness, on the southernmost tip of the Orkney Islands, with a total generating capacity of 99MW – enough power for nearly 100,000 homes.
MCT is also planning to develop Scotland’s first tidal farm at Kyle Rhea, a strait of water between the Isle of Skye and the Scottish mainland, by 2013, and is taking forward plans to develop a tidal energy farm of up to 100MW off Northern Ireland’s Antrim coast.
"Tidal power is a predictable and reliable source of renewable energy and our technology can play an important part in helping Wales realise its
renewable energy targets," said Martin Wright, ceo and founder of MCT.
MCT said the Anglesey farm would generate jobs and where contract local businesses for the assembly, installation, operation and maintenance of the tidal array.
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