Marine Current Turbines (MCT) says that it is getting more energy than expected from its SeaGen tidal stream turbine installation at Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland.
Speaking at the Lisbon International Ocean Power Conference, Peter Fraenkel, Technical Director and co-founder of Marine Current Turbines, said that SeaGen is running at full power and fully automatically. It has already delivered over 350 MWh of energy into the Northern Irish electricity grid since it started operating earlier this year.
“We are delighted with SeaGen’s performance,” said Fraenkel. “It is running reliably and delivering more energy than originally expected in an extremely aggressive environment.
“We are getting more energy than expected mainly because the resource is more energetic than originally predicted during earlier surveys.”
SeaGen, the world’s only commercial-scale tidal stream turbine, was installed at Strangford Lough in 2008 and is being driven by a wall of water that is 27 m deep and that surges back and forth at speeds of up to 10 miles/hour. Its twin generators typically produce an average of 5 MWh of electricity during the 6¼ hours of each ebb and each flood tide, says MCT.
The 1.2 MW capacity SeaGen turbine is equipped with twin 16 m-diameter rotors and is officially accredited by Ofgem, the UK’s energy regulator, as a “UK power station”, the first tidal power system to secure this. It is earning revenue from the sale of the power that is being generated and it also earns ROCs, the Renewable Obligation Certificates that are awarded for clean renewable generation.
In September the project was granted permission to operate without the presence of environmental scientists at the site to monitor the safety of marine mammals such as seals.
Martin Wright, Managing Director of Marine Current Turbines, said: “We are delighted to have moved on from the initial period of commissioning and testing to demonstrating that this is a practical method of generation that really does do exactly what it says on the label. It is a hugely significant milestone for the company to be selling electricity consistently and earning revenue.”
MCT is currently working on a proposed 10.5 MW tidal installation off the coast of North Wales. “Building on our experience in Strangford Lough, the team at MCT are working to deploy tidal turbine arrays in UK and overseas waters, and we are working on new scaled-up developments from SeaGen that promise to generate power at a lower cost,” said Wright.
“The expectation is that this radical new technology can be developed within five to ten years to make a significant contribution to our future energy needs,” added Wright. “Given suitable market incentives, SeaGen demonstrates that marine renewable energy is at the cusp of forming the basis for a new UK industry with considerable world-wide export potential.”
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