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Wind Giant Iberdrola Births Underwater Tidal Turbine Market off Scotland’s Coast

March 17, 2011 By 10 Comments
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Iberdrola subsidiary ScottishPower Renewables plans to install a tidal power project between two islands, Islay and Jura, in the inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland. The expected power output of the £40million project will be 10 MW,  enough to power twice the number of homes on nearby Islay.

Tidal power is a source of renewable energy that has barely broken ground yet, even at the pilot scale. This would be the world’s largest tidal energy project to date. But tidal energy, with its predictable rhythm, has great potential in providing steady source of renewable energy.

There is no one winner in turbine design yet for tidal energy harvesting. This project comprises 10 tidal turbines with a curious look, like little crouching three-legged grasshoppers, but each has a power output of a solid 1 MW.

The design of these turbines comes from Hammerfest Strøm – a Norwegian company that, like ScottishPower Renewables itself, is also partly owned by Iberdrola, the Spanish wind power giant.

Iberdrola had invested $8 billion in the US, and birthed a US subsidiary, Iberdrola USA in 2008 on high hopes of a big new US wind market, but now with the change in fickle America – we voted in representatives to say climate change simply doesn’t exist – it is pulling back from wind farm development in the US.

When it pulled out of the US, Iberdrola cited the changing regulatory environment here (which is a polite way of describing the Tea Party takeover.)

But perhaps, this will be the turbine design that will finally make tidal power a viable new renewable energy business, indirectly brought to us by the climate deniers in the US congress who drove away Iberdrola.

Susan Kraemer@Twitter

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About Susan Kraemer

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, Earthtechling, and GreenProphet and has been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow and Scientific American.

As a former serial entrepreneur in product design she brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention: solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. 

Follow Susan @dotcommodity on twitter.

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  • Bob Wallace

    Not only are tides predictable, their timing is staggered along coasts which means that not all turbines will be experience slack tide (little or no moving water) at the same time.

    For example, tomorrow San Diego experiences a low tide at 2:39am. For LA the low point arrives at 5:39am and Seattle’s morning low tide is 11:26am.

    Were we to hook tidal generators to the existing HVDC transmission lines which already run along the West Coast we could count on tidal power 24/365.

    Then there the Gulf Stream. That’s an always-on ~4MPH energy source.

    • http://cleantechnica.com/author/susan Susan Kraemer

      Oh, is that so? Tides are staggered? I didn’t know that. Then wow, good point, because a staggered tidal flow would be perfect for grid balancing up and down a coast.

  • PJ

    What is the cost per kWh of energy generated by such a turbine?

    • http://cleantechnica.com/author/susan Susan Kraemer

      Not in the press release. But it is a pilot program so it is not competitive with other forms yet, like a pilot in any new kind of infrastructure.

    • Bob Wallace

      Mu guess is that tidal electricity would cost less than wind-produced electricity.

      The equipment is likely to be more expensive since it needs to live underwater, but installation might be less expensive since no supporting tower would be needed. Maintenance costs might be higher but maintenance frequency might be less due to less stress for a generator sited in less buffeting conditions.

      But tides, and especially Gulf Stream water would be more consistent than wind thus spreading equipment costs over more hours of generation.

      • http://cleantechnica.com/author/susan Susan Kraemer

        Yeah, maintenance would be the only issue, but ship’s propellers manage to do much the same thing, so my guess is once this is commercialized it should be very reliable and economical.