40 MW Tidal Power Plant Approved For Northern Australia

A new tidal power project in WA's Kimberley region (something which has been on the cards for many years) has received approval from the WA environment minister (taking the lead in the race to develop the first tidal power plant in Australia's north).

The project is being proposed by Tidal Energy Australia (TEA), who also seem to have taken ownership of Lloyd Energy's graphite energy storage technology. The project will be located at Doctor's Creek near Derby. TEA are also proposing a tidal power project for the lower Ord river.

The proposed plant will have a capacity of 40 MW - the main obstacle to it actually being built seems to be a dependency on the negotiation of a contract for the construction of power lines to major towns in the West Kimberley. TEA says the project (the design and costing was completed in 2003) is awaiting “a suitable offtake contract” before it can go ahead. Woodside's proposed Browse LNG project James Price Point was originally considered to be the likely customer, however with that project being shelved the company is hoping one of the local diamond or zinc mines will fill that role.

The cost is being speculated to be in the $250-$300/MWh range – not be much of a discount from diesel. RenewEconomy suggests the project would require the support of funding from ARENA or the CEFC. There are no details on which tidal technology would be favoured.

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North Devon 'perfect site' for £240m tidal barrage power station

This Is Cornwall has an article on yet another plan for a tidal power project on the Severn Estuary - North Devon 'perfect site' for £240m tidal barrage power station.

The barrage would be 1,200 metres (three-quarters of a mile) long and would run between Northam Burrows and Braunton Burrows. A road bridge would run along the top of the barrage, which Mr Apps claims would halve the travelling distance between Bideford and Braunton as well as alleviate congestion.

The project would cost between £200 and £240 million and would be a public-private partnership. Mr Apps said the project would largely be supported through European funding as well as from private investment.

The barrage would consist of eight or nine variable pitch turbines which would produce between 88 and 100 MW. In total the scheme could power up to 72,000 homes – more than twice the number that Fullabrook Wind Farm powers.

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Is Scotland the “Saudi Arabia” of Tidal Power ?

The Smithsonian blog has a post on a new study on the amount of tidal power available in Scotland's Pentland Firth - Is Scotland the “Saudi Arabia” of Tidal Power ?. A lot of the commentary elsewhere seemed to have a vast amount of political spin on it, claiming that earlier estimates of 10 - 20 GW were vastly overblown. if you actually look at the report (and particularly the image below) its fairly obvious that the new "1.9 GW" estimate is for an installation crossing the firth at one point - obviously you could build a number of installations along the firth (points A1 and A2 for example, or out to the Skerries) and get a rather larger number similar to earlier estimates, not that logic is a strong point for many critics of renewable energy.

The researchers looked at the construction of multiple rows of these sorts of turbines, placed in a variety of locations within the Firth. Their models took into account the depth of the water at each given location, observed tidal speeds and heights over the course of each month, and a number of other variables.

Ultimately, the team found that the maximum practical capacity of 1.9 gigawatts would be possible with three rows of turbines, built in the locations mapped below (B, C, and D on the map). Because each row slows down the movement of the tides that pass through it, building more then three would only marginally improve the power capacity, while increasing the overall cost of the project at a constant rate. (A, on the map, is a proposed alternate scheme that would produce a similar level of energy but at a higher cost.) ...

As of now, the biggest hurdle is price: without any carbon pollution regulation schemes in place, most renewable sources of energy, including tidal power, just aren’t as cheap as burning coal or other fossil fuels. But many energy companies have already recognized that, long-term, the cost of fossil fuel production will increase—both because of eventual regulations of the emissions of greenhouse gases and because of fossil fuels are becoming increasingly costly to extract—and harnessing the power of the tides could provide a reliable way to meet a portion of our energy demands.

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Harnessing the power of our oceans

I'm not entirely sure if the Australian Government's "Clean Energy Future" venture got some inspiration from this blog - nor am I sure if it will last the year out - however it's nice to see a post on ocean energy on their web site - Give us a wave – harnessing the power of our oceans.

As construction begins on a ground-breaking wave energy project in Perth, a report has been released which emphasises the huge untapped energy potential lying off Australia’s coastlines.

According to the Marine Nation 2025 report, released this week, Australia’s oceans could produce billions of dollars’ worth of clean energy in the form of electricity generated by wave power. The report says an initial assessment has identified world-class wave energy resources along the western and southern coastline, and valuable tidal energy resources in the North West of Australia.

Marine Nation 2025 was prepared by the Federal Government’s Oceans Policy Science Advisory Group and highlights the enormous potential of Australia’s oceans, as well as the challenges and opportunities involved with managing our vast maritime resources.

The report comes on the eve of the commencement of the Perth Wave Energy Project, which is due to begin next month. Located at Garden Island, near Perth, the project will start delivering green energy to the grid in 2014. The project will be Australia’s first commercial wave energy project connected to the electricity grid. An associated wave-powered desalination plant will be a world first.

A CSIRO study released last year revealed that ocean waves have the potential to power a city the size of Melbourne by 2050. CSIRO’s Ocean renewable energy: 2015-2050 report said Australia’s ocean waves could supply about 10 per cent of Australia’s electricity by the middle of this century.

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Partnership to build world's largest OTEC plant off China coast

PhysOrg has an article about a planned resort development powered by OTEC technology (a type of ocean energy) in China - Partnership to build world's largest OTEC plant off China coast.

Hong Kong based Reignwood Group and U.S. aerospace company Lockheed Martin have announced plans to build an Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) electricity generating plant off the coast of China to power a planned resort community. Lockheed Martin is to build the facility and run it, while the Reignwood Group will be building the resort community that is to use the power generated. The new plant is expected to produce 100 percent of the power needs of the community.

OTEC plants generate electricity by taking advantage of the difference in water temperature at different ocean depths—warm surface water is used to boil a fluid (one that has a low boiling temperature such as ammonia) that in turn drives a turbine. Cold water brought up from below cools the liquid causing it to once again liquefy allowing the process to repeat over and over. To date, few such plants have been built due to the large expense involved in transporting cold water up from below. The new plant to be built off the coast of southern China will be a pilot project designed to not only supply electricity to the new resort community, but also to serve as a learning environment, helping lead the way to more efficient, and hopefully cheaper plant designs.

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Severn Tidal Power Subsidy Below Offshore Wind

Hope springs eternal in the UK where groups are trying to revive the Severn tidal power project - Severn Tidal Power Subsidy Below Offshore Wind. The article says the subsidies required to be similar for those for a new nuclear power plant - but for a 30 year time frame, even though the tidal power plant would work for well over a century (and wouldn't have unquantifiable decommissioning costs).

The Severn Barrage project probably will require subsidies at about the same level as nuclear power stations and less than what’s offered for offshore wind plants, the developer of the British tidal energy project said.

“We expect that the price we will be able to negotiate will fall below offshore wind, and we hope close to or perhaps at the price nuclear power is currently negotiating,” Gregory Shenkman, chairman of Hafren Power Ltd., said at a hearing in the House of Commons in London today. That would make the project economically viable, he said.

The comments are aimed at answering the criticism that the technology that’s not working at a commercial scale anywhere in Britain would cost too much. Estimates for what the dam-like structure spanning the river at the southern end of Wales ran up to 25 billion pounds ($39 billion).

The Hafren plans, put to Prime Minister David Cameron in July, involve an 11-mile (18 kilometer) barrage from Cardiff in South Wales to Weston-super-Mare in Somerset. Its 1,026 turbines would generate power on tides as the sea rises and falls. The project may create about 20,000 construction jobs and 30,000 manufacturing and service jobs.

The barrage could fulfil 16 percent of that target and be capable of generating as much as 5 percent of the U.K.’s power, the government estimates. The project would need 30 years of support through subsidies. Thereafter, it would run for at least 90 years without support, generating electricity that’s 75 percent cheaper than all other forms of generation, Shenkman said. Across its 120 year life span, the project could produce power at about 48 pounds-a-megawatt-hour, less than the 88 pounds nuclear power costs, he said.

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Belgium plans artificial island for wind energy storage

Many years ago I started off a post on ocean energy with a look at the "energy island" idea. ReNew Economy has a look at a similar scheme being proposed for Belgium - Belgium plans artificial island for wind energy storage.

Belgium is planning to construct an island in the North Sea for the sole purpose storing wind energy.

Wind farms, when constructed using traditional mainstream methods, will eventually require backup as their electricity market penetration increases, and when wind turbines generate surplus electricity due to unusually high wind speeds (which can happen pretty often) it goes to waste.

“We have a lot of energy from the wind mills and sometimes it just gets lost because there isn’t enough demand for the electricity,” said spokeswoman for Belgium’s North Sea minister Johan Vande Lanotte. “This is a great solution,” the spokeswoman said, adding she thought it could be the first of its kind.

Excess wind power would be used to pump water out of the centre of the island, and it would be allowed to flow back in, but through an electricity generating turbine to augment overall electricity production when there is a shortfall of wind energy. Vande Lanotte revealed these plans at the Belgian port of Zeebrugge late on Wednesday.

Large-scale wind energy storage has been mostly just a thought for many years, worldwide, but Belgium decided to step up to the plate and put it to the test.

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South Korea Plans 200-Megawatt Tidal-Power Plant by 2016

Bloomberg reports that South Korea is looking to build a new tidal power plant in Jindo - South Korea Plans 200-Megawatt Tidal-Power Plant by 2016.

South Korea plans to build a tidal- energy plant on the southern tip of the peninsula by 2016, saving an estimated 330,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions a year.

South Jeolla province signed an initial agreement with Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEP), Korea Midland Power Co. and five other companies to build the 200-megawatt plant in Jindo, the provincial government said in an e-mailed statement without giving cost estimates.

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Australia's Northern Territory to test tidal power

The ABC has a post on a tidal power project in the top end - Northern Territory to test tidal power.

The Power and Water Corporation in the Northern Territory has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Tenax Energy to build a two-megawatt tidal energy plant and tidal energy testing centre. The project will be built in the Clarence Strait between Darwin and Melville Island and is expected to be operational within the next 15 months.

Power and Water's manager for sustainable energy, Trevor Horman, says tidal power has the potential to provide a significant percentage of Darwin's electricity supply. "The idea with the testing station is to test out a number of different turbines and technologies in the Clarence Strait," he said."With these turbines it's about the flow of the tide rather then the height. (The project) is reasonably close to an existing power line, so we'll give it a trial over a couple of years and see how the technologies work out there... but we do hope this will prove a safe, reliable and inexhaustible energy source."

Power and Water says the region is one of the largest tidal resources close to a major centre, with a potential generation capacity of 450 megawatts. Darwin's current peak demand is about 300 megawatts.

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First Tidal Power in U.S. Starts Flowing to the Grid

IEE Spectrum reports that a tidal power project has gone live in the US - First Tidal Power in U.S. Starts Flowing to the Grid.

An offshore turbine is finally spinning in the United States! It's not the kind you're imagining, but this is a milestone nonetheless: The Ocean Renewable Power Company announced that its TidGen tidal turbines have started providing power to a utility grid owned by Bangor Hydro Electric Company. This marks the first time that any offshore power generation facility has fed electricity back to a utility grid in the United States.

ORPC completed installation of one of its tidal power devices earlier this summer in Cobscook Bay, part of the bigger Bay of Fundy, off the Maine coast. The TidGen has a peak power output of 180 kilowatts, enough to power around 25 to 30 homes. The company plans on installing another two turbines in the same location in the fall of 2013, possibly scaling up after that to 5 megawatts of power. That would be enough to power around 1200 homes.

The TidGen device, installed in water depths of 15 to 30 meters, takes advantage of water flowing in and out of the bay as the tides change. The Bay of Fundy as a whole is an enormous tidal power resource; ORPC says that 100 billion tons of water flow in and out of the bay every day, with tidal ranges as high as 15 meters. And tidal power has one advantage over, say, offshore wind energy, in that it is remarkably consistent and predictable. Ocean technologies in general are on the rise of late, such as the progress toward wave power in Oregon. Combined, wave and tidal power have fairly massive potential, up to as much as 15 percent of the U.S. electricity demand according to reports from the Department of Energy. Last year, a Georgia Tech group created a tidal power mapping tool that was validated by the DOE to aid in specific site development and localized resource assessment.

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Scotland to Build World's First Community-Owned Tidal Turbine

Inhabitat has a post on a new tidal power project in Scotland - Scotland to Build World's First Community-Owned Tidal Turbine.

As a country, Scotland has some of the most aggressive renewable energy targets in the world – the entire nation is working to be completely independent of fossil fuels in the next decade, and has pledged to use 100 percent renewable energy by 2020. You don’t have to be an energy expert to know that’s no small goal, so it’s no surprise that Scotland is embracing practically every clean energy technology it can find. The country recently announced plans to build the world’s first community-owned tidal turbine. The turbine will be deployed in the Bluemull Sound between the islands of Yell and Unst, and used to power a local ice plant and industrial estate. It will be owned by the North Yell community.

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Severn Tidal Power Project A Possibility Once More ?

The Independent reports that the on-again, off-again Severn tidal power project is under consideration again in the UK as the government searches for infrastructure projects to restart the economy - No 10 asks ministers: Can we now support £30bn Severn barrage?.

David Cameron has ordered ministers to consider backing a £30bn project to harness the tidal power of the Severn estuary, as the Government scrambles to find big infrastructure projects that could help kick-start growth. ...

With the potential to create 20,000 jobs, it is exactly the sort of big-ticket construction project that the coalition needs to find as George Osborne faces a growing clamour to change economic course.

Mr Davey is to consider the details of the Severn barrage plan. However, The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the Liberal Democrats, uneasy about the lack of growth, are to call on the Chancellor to authorise additional public borrowing to fund a wide range of green-energy schemes. Mr Davey's aide, Duncan Hames, has drawn up a policy to this effect.

The idea of a Severn barrage was rejected by the coalition in 2010, which argued there was "no strategic case at this time for public funding of a scheme to generate energy in the Severn estuary".

But Mr Cameron has been persuaded that the long-debated idea of a barrage is worth reconsidering, because the consortium Corlan Hafren says no state funding is required. Instead, investors from Kuwait, Qatar and a number of sovereign wealth funds have expressed support for the idea. ...

Securing government support is crucial, because time would need to be found for legislation to pass through Parliament. Peter Hain, the former Labour cabinet minister, quit his frontbench role earlier this year to champion the project. He has offered to pilot a bill through the Commons, which Mr Cameron has agreed to study.

"Tidal power is the only lunar energy source," Mr Hain said in a letter to Mr Cameron. "Tides can be forecast for years in advance, and therefore tidal power is highly predictable and consistent."

Stretching up to 18 kilometres from Brean on the north Somerset coast to Lavernock Point in South Wales, the scheme, Corlan Hafren claims, could provide 5 per cent of the UK's energy needs, saving one million tonnes of carbon every year. ...

The project is thought to include 1,000 turbines. The Severn estuary has a tidal range of 14 metres, which engineers have contemplated harnessing since the middle of the 19th century.

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Australian ocean energy could power Melbourne by 2050: CSIRO study

ReNew Economy points to a new study from the CSIRO on ocean power potential in Australia - Australian ocean energy could power Melbourne by 2050: study.

Did you know that wave energy has the potential to supply about 11 per cent of Australia’s electricity – the equivalent to powering a city the size of Melbourne – by 2050?

If the results of yesterday’s Climate Institute’s “Climate of the Nation 2012″ report are anything to go by, you probably didn’t. Because while that study found overwhelming support among Australians for the development of renewables, most of this was directed towards solar, wind and hydro, with only 25 per cent of respondents nominating wave energy as their most preferred option (although this number still beat out nuclear and coal).

The fact is, not nearly enough is known about ocean renewable energy in Australia – a situation the CSIRO hopes to redress with its new report, “Ocean renewable energy: 2015-2050.” The report, released today – and from which the above fact was gleaned – is the result of the CSIRO’s efforts to understand the potential of this clean energy source, and to inform the ocean energy industry, government and investors about the challenges and potential for the technology.

“Given the potential of ocean energy and the fact that it’s a very new technology, CSIRO wanted to understand what is the sustainable level at which this resource could be used for energy supply and whether it could be competitive with other energy technologies,” said Ian Cresswell, acting director of the CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship. “Assessing the opportunities and challenges from resource to the market is a first for ocean renewable energy in Australia.”

The study was carried out by the Wealth from Oceans and Energy Transformed Flagships and included an analysis of the resource, cost to market, technologies and future take-up projections by oceanographers, engineers, economists. It also engaged the ocean energy industry and related sectors.

As the report – which can now be viewed online – points out, wave energy converters are still an emerging technology. CSIRO’s research uncovered at least 200 devices around the world in various stages of testing and demonstration, but found that relatively few had publicly available data on deployments at sea in full operational mode. ...

Nonetheless, the study identified 16 Australian companies that are either actively developing ORE projects, have received significant government and/or private funding, or have announced ORE plans; and it pointed to some home-grown technologies being offered to the market – the most advanced being the CETO submerged buoy system, and the OceanLinx oscillating water column system.

The largest ORE project in Australia (recipient of a $66 million grant from the federal government) was identified as the construction of a wave farm off the coast of Victoria by Ocean Power Technologies Australasia (OPTA), a company with a US-based parent.

As for Australia’s ocean energy potential, the report found that Australia has an abundant wave energy resource and could produce 24-hour power, either from the tides, currents or waves. The nation’s best resource was found to be concentrated along the southern coastline, as well as a consistent, yet smaller, contribution on the east coast – although the report said characterisation of this resource area required further attention.

The areas the report says could benefit most from wave energy technology include Perth, the southern coastline, and (less-so) the east coast of Australia (see chart below). It also found that tidal technology could supply niche areas such as north east Tasmania and WA’s Kimberley region and ocean thermal energy off the coast of far north Queensland.

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Maine company leading way as tidal energy comes of age

The Portland Press Herald has an article on the first commercial tidal power generation in North America, in the Bay Of Fundy - Maine company leading way as tidal energy comes of age.

The tide is running out of Passamaquoddy and Cobscook bays, transforming the miles-wide ocean passages around Eastport into fast-running rivers.

To the east of this easternmost American port, the Western Hemisphere's largest whirlpool is surging to life, creating a vortex capable of sucking a small skiff into the abyss. Here on the west side of town, the sea is fleeing Cobscook and, unwittingly, generating electricity for the Ocean Renewable Power Co.

Slung beneath a specially built barge moored near the bay's mouth, a sailboat-sized turbine spins in the 4-knot current, generating a clean, renewable and predictable flow of electricity. It's a 50-kilowatt prototype that ORPC is developing for use in rivers, a small cousin to the 60-kilowatt device it tested here last year.

On Tuesday, however, the company will unveil its first full-scale commercial unit at a ceremony here: a cylindrical module as big as a Grand Banks fishing schooner with long curved turbine foils. Sometime next month, it will carefully attach the module to a mount already awaiting it on the Cobscook sea floor a mile farther up the bay from here. The company will attach cables linking it to new transmission lines on the Lubec shore and, with the push of a button, the 180-kilowatt turbine will begin selling power to the grid, the first of a new class of damless tidal energy devices to do so anywhere in North America.

Tidal power, long in development, is finally coming of age, with a Maine company leading the way.

"What ORPC is doing in Cobscook Bay is really a very important milestone," said Paul Jacobson, an ocean energy expert at the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Electrical Power Research Institute. "With this project, these tidal power devices have finally crossed the threshold into commercial development."

There's much more to come. ORPC plans to add two more turbines to its Cobscook site in the coming year, and as many as 18 in the faster, harsher waters of Passamaquoddy Bay on the other side of Eastport by 2016.

"Maine is where it all started and where the lessons are being learned," said ORPC's president and co-founder, Chris Sauer, who calls Eastport the "Kitty Hawk" of his nascent industry. "Maine will become the intellectual center for tidal energy, with the people and knowledge base for how to do this."

The Eastport area has Maine's highest tides -- 20 feet -- because it is perched at the mouth of the vast Bay of Fundy, home to the greatest tides on the planet. It's the ultimate tidal resource, and ORPC and its foreign rivals are competing to harness its energy.

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Global Exergy Resource Chart

Stanford's "Global Climate and Energy project" has a great chart showing the energy sources available to us and how much we are currently using - Global Exergy Resource Chart.

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India’s first tidal energy plant coming up in Gujarat

The Weekend Leader has an update on a proposed tidal power plant in India - India’s first tidal energy plant coming up in Gujarat.

The Gujarat government is all set to develop India’s first tidal energy plant. The state government has approved Rs 25 crore for setting up the 50 MW plant at the Gulf of Kutch. It will produce energy from the ocean tides.

The state government signed a MoU with Atlantis Resource Corporation last year to develop the plant.

According to an estimate, India has a potential of 8,000 MW of tidal energy “The proposal was approved in this year’s budget session,” says Rajkumar Raisinghani, senior executive with Gujarat Power Corporation Limited (GPCL).

Atlantis Resource Corporation is a UK-based developer of tidal current turbines. “The equipment has been imported and work will start anytime soon. We are awaiting Coastal Regulation Zone clearance from Ministry of Environment and Forests, which is expected soon,” adds Raisinghani.

According to the GPCL officials, if this 50 MW plant is successfully commissioned, its capacity will be increased to 200 MW. As per a study conducted by Atlantis Resource Corporation and the state government two years ago, the Gulf of Kutch has a total potential of 300 MW. The biggest operating tidal station in the world, La Rance in France, generates 240 MW.

According to the estimates of the Indian government, the country has a potential of 8,000 MW of tidal energy. This includes about 7,000 MW in the Gulf of Cambay in Gujarat, 1,200 MW in the Gulf of Kutch and 100 MW in the Gangetic delta in the Sunderbans region of West Bengal.

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System for Predicting Wave Energy Could Double Wave Power Generation

EcoGeek has a post on research into optimising wave power generation - System for Predicting Wave Energy Could Double Wave Power Generation.

As part of a new study on wave power, the University of Exeter and Tel Aviv University have come up with a system that predicts the power of waves in order to maximize wave energy devices' ability to generate energy from the sea. The researchers found that this system could potentially double the amount of wave energy generated by a device.

Phys.org reports, "The research focused on point absorbers, commonly-used floating devices with parts that move in response to waves, generating energy which they feed back to the grid. Point absorbers are already known to be much more efficient in the amount of energy they produce if their response closely matches the force of the waves and previous research has looked at trying to increase this efficiency. However, this is the first study that has focused on increasing the device's efficiency by predicting and controlling internal forces of the device caused by forthcoming waves."

Wave energy potential is huge. It's been estimated that it could power the world twice over and the UK, where this study was conducted, could be powered twice over just by utilizing wave energy generators along its coastlines. So far, wave energy technologies haven't gained traction the way that solar and wind technologies have because the ocean is a very inhospitable place. Wave energy generators have to be able to withstand the force of each wave.

This new system predicts the power of the incoming wave, allowing the device to respond in a way that extracts the most amount of energy. This controlled reaction not only increases the efficiency of the device, but protects it from damage from rough seas. Where most current wave technologies would be shut off during a storm, a prediction system could allow the wave generator to keep operating effectively.

The University of Exeter is now working with Ocean Power Technologies, one of the largest wave energy companies, to further test the results and develop better technologies based on this research.

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Canberra grants pave way for world’s biggest wave turbine

Giles Parkinson at ReNewEconomy has an article on the release of some government funding to wave power companies BioPower (mentioned in this post on biomimicry) and long time developer OceanLinx to build pilot plants (following an earlier funding round to Carnegie Corp in WA) - Canberra grants pave way for world’s biggest wave turbine.

The Australian government as upped its investment in two nascent, Australian-developed wave energy technologies, announcing new grants worth almost $10 million to help bring the two new systems to the market, including what is believed to be the world’s biggest wave energy turbine.

The government is providing $5.6 million to BioPower Systems to install a 250kW full-scale pilot plant of its bioWAVE technology off the coast of Victoria, and is also providing just under $4 million to Oceanlinx, to install a 1MW demonstration plan of its Greenwave technology in South Australia.

Both grants are being made under the $126 million Emerging Renewables program, and follow an earlier $9 million grant to Carnegie Wave Energy, which is building a $31 million, 2MW grid-connected demonstration of its CETO technology near Fremantle in Western Australia.

BioPower CEO Tim Finnigan said the grant, along with a $5 million grant from the Victorian state government, means that its $15 million project was now fully funded. “This puts us into a position to complete the project, get it on the grid, and prove the technology at scale,” he told RenewEconomy. “It’s a pretty big development for us.”

The technology is best described with an image, see below. It’s designed to lay flat on the ocean floor when the waves become too big (it calculated this to be around 1 per cent of the time).

It is designed to absorb energy both at the surface and below. It is mounted on sea-floor, the demonstrator will be in about 30m of water, and the array of buoyant floats, sways back-and-forth in tune with the waves, and the energy contained in this motion is converted to electricity by an onboard self-contained power conversion module, and is delivered through a cable.

However, the first demonstration plan will weigh 400 tonnes when it is installed at a site 4kms from Port Fairy on the southern coast of Victoria. “We not trying to prove a light-weight structure right now,” Finnigan says. “We will carve our way to that over time.”

Like Carnegie Energy, Finnigan says the long term goal for wave energy has to be to match wind – which means capital costs of around $2 million/megawatt and a levellised cost of energy at $100/MWh or below. He says BioPower has a four-stage plan to reach that target by the end of the decade. ...

Meanwhile, Oceanlinx says it believes its GreenWave device (see below) is the first in the world to be rated at 1MW, and its efficiency has improved 50 per cent since an earlier, smaller version that was deployed near Port Kembla in NSW. The 20m by 20m structure, around 17m high, will sit in around 10m of water. It features an oscillating water column, with the turbine and other moving parts above the waterline. The 2,000 tonne concrete structure will sit on the ocean floor.

CEO Ali Baghaei says this demonstration unit will have an LCOE of 28c/kWh, which will fall to 16c/kWh once 5MW have been installed and to below 10c/kWh once 75MW have been installed. The initial project will cost $7.2 million, with the balance coming from a recent $8 million fund raising from existing investors. ...

Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson said the grants made Australia “one of the world’s largest supporters” of wave energy technology. “Wave energy is still very much an emerging technology and this funding will position Australia as a global leader in developing this technology,” he said in a statement, adding that wave energy had the potential of providing 1300 terawatt hours per year, or about five times Australia’s total electricity requirements.

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1MW Orkney tidal project paves way for “world’s first” tidal array

Renewable Energy Focus has a post on the commissioning of a tidal power array in Scotland - 1MW Orkney tidal project paves way for “world’s first” array. PhysOrg has more - Scotland passes turbine test to harness tidal power.

A 1MW tidal power device has started full export of power in Scottish waters, paving the way for ScottishPower, to deploy the technology in the “world’s first” tidal array.

The 1MW HS1000 tidal turbine, developed by Norway’s Andritz Hydro Hammerfest, was installed in the fast-flowing waters around Orkney last December. It has now successfully completed a range of tests, and is supplying electricity to the island of Eday, one of Orkney’s northern isles.

The test device in Orkney aims to fully prove that the technology can operate efficiently in Scotland’s fast flowing tides, that monitoring and maintenance operations can be honed and to help drive down costs in operations and installation.

The technology will be used by Iberdrola-owned ScottishPower Renewables as part of the “world’s first” tidal turbine array in the Sound of Islay. The company’s proposal for a 10MW tidal array received planning consent from the Scottish government in March 2011.

The Scotsman has some additional commentary on the politics of tidal power in the UK - Comment: Lord Smith not convinced by toe in the water.

IT WAS perhaps just a bit of bad luck that Lord Smith of Kelvin, the chairman of the much-anticipated Green Investment Bank (GIB), kicked investment in wave and tidal power into the long grass on the same day the sector highlighted it was desperate for cash.

The Marine Energy Action Plan, unveiled by the Scottish Government and its industry-led Marine Energy Group, reported on the significant progress made by Scotland’s wave and tidal energy sector.

It counted the 11 wave and tidal devices deployed or being deployed at the European Marine Energy Centre on Orkney, adding that there will be three more being tested by 2014.

Near Islay, there is also the world’s largest consented tidal stream project that will deploy the HS1000 tidal device in a project being undertaken by ScottishPower Renewables and the Austrian/Norwegian group, Andritz Hydro Hammerfest.

Then there is the Crown Estate’s leasing agreements for projects with a potential to produce up to 1,600 MW in the Pentland Firth and Orkney waters.

But, as Niall Stuart, the chief executive of industry body Scottish Renewables points out, getting the finance to scale up these projects to commercially viable arrays is a “major challenge”, not to mention the “massive costs to connect these projects to the grid”.

So where is the money going to come from? There are some technology developers that have got at least some support and investment from big private firms such as Alstom, Rolls Royce and Siemens.

The sector will have to rely on a range of funds being made available through the Department of Energy and Climate Change (£20 million), the Scottish Government’s Marine Renewables Commercialisation Fund (£18m) and the Technology Strategy Board (£10.5m).

It also has high hopes for the Renewable Energy Infrastructure Fund, made up from the £100m disbursement from the Fossil Fuel Levy that the Scottish Government wrangled from the Treasury last year. The other half of the levy was used to fund the foundation of the GIB.

The GIB, on the other hand, has £3 billion burning a hole in its pocket that has to be spent by April 2015.

Lord Smith says there is huge interest in the innovative developments taking place in wave and tidal energy, but despite his enthusiasm the entire sector still has its sceptics.

The GIB is taxpayer funded and while some will want it to take risks it has first to prove to the markets that it can deliver a return on its investment.

Scottish Enterprise has a map of offshore power investments in Scotland (including wind power as well as ocean energy - Examples of recent announcements of intended investments in offshore renewables.

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GDF Suez spells out big ambitions for French tidal power

Recharge News has a look at plans to expand tidal power in France - GDF Suez spells out big ambitions for French tidal power.

French utility GDF Suez has revealed details of plans for two large-scale tidal power developments on the west coast of the country by 2016.

The group has carried out studies of Raz Blanchard in Lower Normandy and the Passage du Fromveur off the Finistère coast in Brittany – between them estimated to represent 80% of France’s marine renewable energy potential.

At Raz Blanchard, where tidal speeds of more than six metres-per-second create a 4-6GW potential resource, GDF Suez aims to install a pilot plant of up to six of Voith Hydro’s HyTide turbines, creating a 3-12MW development – with long-term plans to deploy 100 machines.

The company also wants to develop a tidal plant at the Passage du Fromveur by 2016 in conjunction with Eole Generation, using technology-developer Sabella’s D10 prototype.

GDF Suez is already involved in marine renewables, including the MeyGen tidal farm project in Scotland’s Pentland Firth; the Electricité De Tahiti scheme in the French Polynesian archipelago of Tuamotu; Brazil’s Tractebel Energia project; and the Standpoint-Wavebob in Portugal.

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