£7.9m for Scottish Wave and Tidal Power
The Scottish government has made grants totaling 7.9 million pounds to five wave and tidal power companies. These grants are the second round of the Wave & Tidal Energy: Research, Development & Demonstration Support (WATERS) funding. Grants were made to two wave energy companies and three working on tidal power.
“The WATERS 2 funding sends a further clear signal that Scotland – already blessed with some of the world’s greatest concentrations of marine energy resource and with unrivaled offshore energy engineering expertise – will continue to provide the optimum research and investment environment for developers and commercial partners,” said deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon.
Scotrenewables Tidal Power Ltd, located in the Orkney Islands, received £1.24 million to help construct a 2-MW floating tidal turbine.
Chip in a few dollars a month to help support independent cleantech coverage that helps to accelerate the cleantech revolution!
AlbaTern is the recipient of £617,000 for an array of six 7.5-kW wave energy converter modules. They say the research they are conducting with their 7.5-kW module arrays will allow them to work with 100-kW modules and arrays that will produce 10 MW or more in the future.
Nautricity’s £1.4 million grant is for the construction of a full-scale 500-kW tidal contra rotating turbine. It is suitable for placement in water eight to five hundred meters deep.
Oceanflow Development was given a £750,000 grant. They say their technology is distinct because of the ease of placing it in marine environments and recovering it. Their power generator resembles a wind turbine, but is placed under water.
AWS Ocean Energy received £3.9 million to assist with their wave power arrays. Their systems convert wave energy to pneumatic power, which is then converted into electricity.
The Institute of Mechanical engineer has calculated for a report that Scotland could generate 10% of Europe’s wave energy and 25% of its tidal energy.
According to one source, the potential of marine and tidal power in the UK is 27 GW by 2050. This amount has been estimated to be about the same energy output of eight coal power plants.
Image Credit: Public Domain, the image is only an example of wave power.
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Latest CleanTechnica.TV Video
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
