Aquamarine Power’s Oyster 800 wave energy device deployed in Orkney, Scotland, has been restarted following a major refit over the summer.
The Oyster 800 at the European Marine Energy Centre was taken out of service in the summer to enable the replacement of new components. On November 7, Aquamarine Power said that the machine had been producing power over two weeks of controlled tests and that it was slowly building up power production.
The Orkney demonstration is a key part of Aquamarine’s plans to develop its next-generation Oyster 801 machine, which will be located adjacent to the Oyster 800 at EMEC. It is proposing to build commercial-scale wave energy farms off the west coast of Orkney and the west coast of Lewis, Scotland.
"We are continuing to test the safety systems of the plant and are slowly building up power production. In 60 hours of operations we have produced 6 MWh of power," said Martin McAdam, CEO Aquamarine Power. "We averaged about 100 kW output and had a peak output of 435 kW. Our longest continuous period of controlled power output was 22 hours."
"So far all of the replacement kit on the machine has performed as expected – but it is early days," McAdam continued. "Our controlled testing will continue."
