Tidal

Introduction

Scotland’s Highlands and Islands have more than their share of tidal energy resources. The Pentland Firth Strategic Area alone hosts 6 of the top 10 tidal energy sites in the UK. The Shetland Islands are also considered to have great potential for generating tidal energy.

Pentland Firth – International Interest and Local Expertise

Seabed owners the Crown Estate expect the Pentland Firth area to be generating well over 700 megawatts (MW) of energy from tidal and wave device deployment by 2020.

This area of sea off the northern coast of mainland Scotland, and encompassing the waters around the Orkney Islands Group, contains 50% of the UK’s tidal resource and 25% of Europe’s tidal resource.

Fairly early in 2010, the Crown Estate is expected to announce its choice of developers to place their devices in the Pentland Firth as part of its Round 1 offer of commercial scale seabed leases for tidal and wave developments.

A business with designs on deployment in the Pentland Firth is Tocardo Tidal Energy Ltd, a Dutch company with offices at Forss Business & Technology Park in Caithness. They describe their device as a “two bladed, under water wind turbine.” They also foresee production and assembly operations at Wick Harbour in due course.

One of the many other companies looking to develop technology in the Pentland Firth area is International Power Marine Development, a wholly owned subsidiary of International Power which has interests in 45 power stations across the world. In late 2008, the company commissioned Xodus Aurora (which has an environmental consultancy team based in Orkney) to produce an environmental scoping report for its planning application.

Commercial-scale Device Testing

A globally important hub for advancement of tidal device research and development (as well as wavepower devices) is the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney, which opened its tidal research facilities in 2007. Developers are able to test commercial-scale, grid-connected prototypes in realistic sea conditions.

EMEC’s tidal test site is located at the Fall of Warness, off the island of Eday. The 4km by 2km channel has powerful marine currents and five test berths are in place at depths ranging from 25m to 50m.

In November 2009, Atlantis Resources Corporation, an international marine renewable energy developer headquartered in London, announced that it would deploy its AK-1000 tidal device at EMEC during summer 2010. Longer-term, the company intends to build a comprehensive local supply chain, with UK-based manufacturing, installation, operations and maintenance.

Atlantis is investing £15 million ($25 million) to construct and evaluate the device which will have a 1 megawatt capacity and 18 metre diameter rotors.

The AK-1000 will join Dublin-based OpenHydro’s Open-Centre device at the tidal research site. Also joining OpenHydro is a 500 kilowatt device from Tidal Generation Ltd of Bristol.

Beside its main task of working with individual developers to monitor their own proprietary devices, EMEC runs other distinct research activity. This includes “MetOcean” monitoring to collect data on current and wave behaviour in varying weather, to help inform device design and assessment.

Environmental Research

The Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), in Argyll, has been looking at possible impacts of tidal and wave devices on the marine environment.

SAMS has been working in conjunction with EMEC to develop methodologies and equipment to collect acoustic baseline data at the Orkney tidal test site, so that long-term monitoring can be conducted to assess any impacts on fish, sea mammals and birds.

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