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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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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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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