Marine Energy

The south west's portfolio of marine energy resources offer a excellent opportunity for sustainable energy, economic growth, jobs and prosperity in the region.

As the technology of marine renewable continues to move from concept towards commercialisation the south west is ideally positioned to capture a large share.

To sieze this opportunity the south west was recently designated as the UK's first marine energy park - The South West Marine Energy Park.

Resource

The south west has excellent wave and tidal energy resources with the potential to make a significant contribution to the UK’s future energy requirements. To quantify this potential the south west regional development agency comissioned a study to assess how the region could develop its marine energy potential out to 2030. The Offshore Renewables Resorce and Development report (ORRAD) was created with two parts, an economic impact report and a technical report.

These reports concluded that by 2030, the total installed capacity for both wave and tidal stream could be up to 2.32 GW.

Both the wave and tidal resources in the SW offer a number of advantages over seemingly higher resource locations in other parts of the UK. Sheltered by the peninsular the marine environment is less hostile with access for operation and maintenance activities being good. The electricity grid needs only relatively minor work to its infrastructure to export the energy generated and being close to the market is advantageous as well.

Big waves

As the south west peninsula of England juts into the Atlantic it faces the prevailing westerly oceanic swell. These long waves pack an enormous amount of energy – with a typical range of 15-25 kw/m (kilowatts per metre of wave face).

In the area around Wave Hub off the north Cornish coast this increases to 35-40 kw/m in the area around the Isles of Scilly. Building upon the experiences for the Wave Hub, the future potential installed capacity for wave energy in the SW could be up to 1.24 GW by 2030.

High Tides

At 14 metres the Severn Estuary boasts the second highest tidal range in the world. This creates a massive energy resource with the potential to generate 6% of the energy needs of England and Wales - with a capacity of 8640MW.

Tidal Streams

The region also has a number of areas where tidal streams could be exploited, including the Bristol Channel, around Portland Bill, the Isles of Scilly and the nearby Channel Islands.The ORRAD report found that tidal stream projects could contribute up to 1.08 GW of installed capacity by 2030.
Infrastructure

Infrastructure

Wave Hub

Wave Hub is the worlds largest grid connected wave energy demonstration site. It has attracted over £42 million in investment to the region as well as generating significant interest and positive press for marine energy in the region.

Situated 12 miles off the north cornish coast near Hayle it provides an underwater 'socket' that wave energy device developers can plug into. It is made up of 8km2 of consented seabed with a cable link to a purpose built substation at Hayle which connects it to the national grid.

Wave Hub allows developers to demonstrate early arrays of devices at full scale in real working conditions. It has got room for four 5MW arrays (20MW total) with the potential for 50 MW through the existing cable.

Wave Hub went live in early 2011 and has already had two of its berths reserved by developers. American company Ocean Power Technologies plan on demonstrating their Power Buoy device and Irish company Ocean Energy Ltd (in collaboration with Dresser Rand) plan to deploy their OE buoy by the end of 2012.

FaB Test

The Falmouth Bay Test site (FaB Test) is a one quarter scale, fully consented, wave energy test site developed in response to industry requests for an area to test scale models of wave energy devices in real dynamic environments.

It allows for up to three devices to be deployed concurrently and while not grid connected it does provide an extremely accesable and cost effective nursery facility as a stepping stone from proof of concept to full scale deployment at Wave Hub.

It has been developed as a collaborative partnership between the A&P Group, Falmouth harbour comissioners, Wave Hub, The University of Exeter, Cornwall Marine Network & Mojo Maritime and is an excellent example of the public, private and academic sectors working together.

Universities

The Pensinsula Research Institute for Marine Renewable Energy (PRIMaRE) is a collaboration between Exeter and Plymouth universities and supports more than 60 academics conducting applied research into all aspects of marine renewable energy.

Exeter University runs a highly popular Bsc Renewable Energy course and Plymouth University runs the countries first taught masters degree in Marine Renewable Energy - both of which are taught by PRIMaRe academics.