Did you listen to the recent BBC podcast “Is tidal power a viable energy source?”
The Pentland Firth is the strait that lies between northern Scotland mainland and Orkney islands, where ferocious winds and tides occur resulting in treacherous waters, though as a result, also offers the opportunity to harness such power for greener energy.
BBC’s Theo Leggett explores further during his podcast, including discussions with our own managing director Cameron McNatt, Fraser Johnson of MeyGen, Eileen Linklater of EMEC and Dr Athanasios Angeloudis of University of Edinburgh’s School of Engineering.
During this program, Cameron highlights the ocean is a harsh environment and others have been trying to develop wave energy machines for a long time now but what they haven’t been able to do is do it economically.
“What we (Mocean Energy) are doing is starting small in markets where we can be cost-competitive straight away; these are offshore industries where we can provide power to offshore off-grid equipments and then we will scale that up to address opportunities like islands. Islands are still using diesel generation that is highly CO2 intensive, very expensive and they need solutions and they don’t often want wind power because of the visual impact of it or because solar power isn’t going to provide power at the right times whereas wave power can be very consistent in many of these island countries. Like all renewables, they (Mocean Energy’s wave energy converter technology) offer a sort of niche solution to address particular problems that can’t be solved with wind and solar.”
And the future is bright and one that sees Mocean Energy developing larger machines giving larger positive impact: “We are starting with small machines, building upon this and deploying machines into wave farms. These farms can be combined with wind so we can deploy devices interspersed with offshore wind farms, maximising utility of that space. We can complement wind power with wave power.”
Our BlueX wave energy converter, along with Verlume‘s Halo battery storage system, has now successfully completed 13 months of sea testing off Orkney as part of the world-leading Renewables for Subsea Power (RSP) project. Following inspection and clean in Orkney, the technologies headed to Aberdeen for further inspection and maintenance, with the technology expected to head back to sea in the near future.
Grab a cuppa and hit play on this interview, which shines a light on the efforts being made in the net zero transition arena. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct4n0l
BBC podcast, 28th March 2024: