Engineering firm Rolls-Royce has taken measures to get into the renewable energy market with an investment in TGL, a UK-based developer of free stream tidal power generation systems.
Rolls-Royce has bought a 23.5 per cent equity stake in the company, following on from an earlier investment of £1.5 million. The move is part of Rolls’ efforts to research environmental technologies for its aerospace, marine and energy markets.
TGL is developing 500 kW and 1 MW tidal stream demonstrator units to assess the viability of the technology ahead of commercial-scale systems for deployment in tidal power arrays. It is working with a number of partners, including International Power Marine Developments, and has also received funding from the UK government.
TGL’s tidal turbines are designed to operate in water depths of over 30 m with no impact on shipping. The company believes that the demonstrator devices will generate electricity costing 8-9p/kWh, falling to 5-6p/kWh for commercial developments.
Rolls-Royce Director of Engineering and Technology, Colin Smith, said: “The TGL concept incorporates novel installation, deployment and recovery techniques, and we believe it could lead to a cheaper, and more reliable and maintainable tidal power system than is currently available.
“TGL’s management team has experience in successfully developing tidal power demonstrators. Rolls-Royce is well placed to act as a product development partner because we have technology and experience, in some areas uniquely so, that is directly applicable to the TGL product concept.”
TGL is currently focussing on completing the detailed design for installation of a 500 kW machine at the European Marine Energy Centre in the Orkney Islands.
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