![]() The Faroe Islands, too, are home to ambitious tidal stream investments. In May, it delivered the first floating tidal stream power to Nova Scotia’s energy grid. In 2020, the Canadian government announced a $28.5m investment in floating tidal energy being developed by Scottish company Sustainable Marine at the Bay of Fundy, home to the world’s most powerful tides. Funding availability, including government technology support, is the major challenge which limits scale-up and cost reductions.”Ī graphic showing the Orbital O2 in action. “All these activities demand money from developers who, unlike oil and gas, are mainly SMEs with limited financial resources. “The operational environment requires high specification designs and technologies, and specialist ships for installation and maintenance,” he says. In the same year, plans for a tidal lagoon at Swansea Bay, previously tipped to be the UK’s first commercial tidal power generator, collapsed when the government failed to guarantee financial support to cover energy costs. The company entered liquidation in 2018, having been bought out by French company Naval Energies which ultimately pulled its funding. Just minutes away from the O2 is an abandoned test rig installed by Irish company OpenHydro in 2006. “Private investors won’t be prepared to put money in because it feels like the rug could be pulled from under you at any moment.” “If we can’t get comfortable that there’s going to be a long-term market, we’re still at square one,” he says. Last year, the government reintroduced short-term support, but what is needed is a long-term vision, Scott says. The UK is considered a world leader in the development of tidal power technology, but while the government provided ringfenced support to the sector from 2008, it was removed in 2016. “What we need is market intervention to level the playing field.” “All new technology in any space is more expensive than the market, so we can’t compete out of the box against mature generating technologies,” says Andrew Scott, CEO of Orbital Marine Power. The Orbital 02 turbine blades being submerged below the waves. A subsea cable connects it to the local onshore electricity grid, where the energy it produces can meet the demands of about 2,000 homes each year. ![]() It consists of a 74-metre floating structure with a submerged two-bladed turbine on each side. This is the version the company hopes to take to market. Orbital’s O2 turbine, deployed to Orkney’s Fall of Warness testing site in July last year, is the third iteration of its tidal technology. “More ocean energy converters have been tested here than any other site.” “We have some of the best conditions in the world to test new technologies,” MacKenzie says. In Orkney, testing is aimed at lowering the costs and risks of tidal power to make it commercially viable. “Wind energy was the UK’s to lose and we lost it,” she says. But the government didn’t invest – and Denmark and Germany swooped in to monopolise the market. In the 1980s, Orkney was home to experimental wind turbine technology that could have seen the UK become a global leader in the sector. Aboard the boat, Lisa MacKenzie from Emec tells a now infamous tale about the UK renewables sector. Tidal stream power alone could provide 11% of the UK’s current electricity needs, according to 2021 research from Plymouth University.ĭespite its promise, progress has been slow. Tidal stream is cheaper to build and has less of an environmental impact than barrages, which alter tidal flow and can affect marine life and birds. Only tidal barrages are used commercially – most notably at Lake Sihwa in South Korea and La Rance in northern France – but it is tidal stream technology that is being tested in Orkney. Harnessing power from the waves can be done in three ways: tidal barrages, in which turbines are attached to a dam-like wall tidal lagoons, where a body of water is enclosed by a barrage-like barrier and tidal stream, where turbines are placed directly into fast-flowing bodies of water. “Unlike other renewables which rely on, for instance, the sun or the wind, tidal resources are predictable and continuous,” says Prof AbuBakr Bahaj, head of the energy and climate change division at the University of Southampton. It’s the only renewable power source that comes from the moon’s pull on the Earth. Tidal power, while not yet widely commercialised, is seen by many as the next frontier in global renewables. The Orbital O2 at the Emec Fall of Warness test site.
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