Wave farms create energy from the motion of waves in seas or oceans, providing some of the most environmentally-friendly energy available today. Construction of the largest such wave generator farm in the world, off the coast of Scotland, has now been given a green light by the country's government.
Aquamarine Power, a hydrokinetic developer from Edinburgh, will begin construction of the 40 MW green-energy wave farm in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Lewis, Scotland. Lewis sits in the northwest corner of that nation. The farm will consist of 50 Oyster 800 generators, each delivering eight-tenths of a megawatt of electricity. Together, they will generate enough green energy to power 30,000 homes. The Oyster devices operate in 33 to 50 feet of water.
"Our engineers are currently working hard on getting the technology right and we now have a site where we can install our first small farm, with a larger-scale commercial build out in the years ahead," Martin McAdam, CEO of aquamarine said.
Construction is planned to take several years, and grid infrastructure will be performed early on in the process.
Aquamarine Power is in the process of testing the generators, their second full-scale wave machine. The test models sit off the coast of Orkney, a archipelago in northern Scotland. Looking like a large hinge, one side of the device is planted into a pair of points on the seabed, while the other half, called the wave energy converter flap, is free to move in the water. Movement drives pistons which push fresh water under pressure back onshore. There, a Pelton wheel is driven by that pressure, generating electricity. A Pelton wheel is a highly-efficient form of water turbine invented in the 1870's.
A total of 50 of these Oyster generators will generate power on the new farm, however, there may be a delay in the delivery of a critical component. SSE, a large Scottish energy transmission company, has announced that they will not be able to commission a one billion dollar subsea electrical cable for the farm until 2017. Despite this, the project is still the largest in the history of wave generation farms.
"This is another significant milestone for Scotland's wave sector. With ten percent of Europe's wave power potential and twenty-five percent of its offshore wind and tidal power potential, the opportunities for Scotland are enormous," Fergus Ewing, Minister for Energy, Enterprise and Tourism said. Ewing went public with the go-ahead during the first day of the All-Energy Conference and Exhibition in Aberdeen. That show is a major event in the renewable energy industry.
