Could sea power become the
Areport published last week revealed the scale of the marine energy sector in Wales, with investment in the sector now running at more than £68m and expected to top £1.4bn over the next five years.
The lion’s share of that projected investment will come from the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon, assuming it gets through the last few obstacles facing it before it can go ahead.
But there are several other innovative marine energy projects either planned or under way for the seas off Wales, which together could add up to a significant new industrial sector at the forefront of energy technology.
Sadly, there have also been some projects that seemed to promise much, only to fall by the wayside.
Wave Hub Last week the Welsh Government announced funding of more than £300,000 for a feasibility study into the South Pembrokeshire demonstration zone, the largest wave energy seabed lease in the world with the potential to support the demonstration of multiple wave energy arrays with a generating capacity of up to 30MW each.
The leaseholder for the demonstration zone is Wave Hub, the operating company for the existing wave energy test site off the north Cornwall coast, also called Wave Hub.
Leased from the Crown Estate, the South Pembrokeshire Demonstration Zone will enable technology developers to deploy and test multi-device arrays of wave energy converters, to generate up to 100MW of green electricity from the sea and act as a catalyst in the establishment of a centre for marine energy production in Wales.
The two-phase study will be led by Wave Hub, which is managing the site. The zone, one of two in Wales, covers a 90 sq km area of seabed located between 13km and 21 km off the South Pembrokeshire coast near the Milford Haven Waterway.
The feasibility study is due to start at the end of April and the findings will be known early in 2018.
The £324,000 funding comes jointly from the European Regional Development Fund and the Welsh Government.
WaveSub Not to be confused with the above, WaveSub is a wave energy converter designed and developed by Marine Power Systems, based in Swansea.
MPS was founded by Swansea University engineering postgraduates Dr Gareth Stockman and Dr Graham Foster, who claim their device could significantly “reduce the costs associated with energy generation from waves”.
Last year the company awarded the tender for the manufacture of the device to Ledwood Mechanical Engineering, an engineering company based in Pembroke Dock.
Ledwood is constructing a quarter-scale prototype of WaveSub, which it is hoped will be deployed this year to provide crucial data on the operation of the device. It is described as an important step in the journey towards commercialisation of the project.
The quarter-scale prototype device is 15m long, 10m wide and 2.5m tall. The full-scale version will be between 35-40m long and have an output of 1.5MW.
MPS hopes to deploy its first small farm of devices in the South Pembrokeshire wave demonstration zone in 2019.
Managing director Dr Stockman said that farms of up to 100 devices could potentially be deployed in the future.
Wave-tricity Another Cornish company, Wavetricity has secured £4m in EU funds to develop and test its Ocean Wave Rower device.
The two-year project, launched last September, aims to pave the way for full-scale deployment of the technology and the development of a long-term sustainable business in west Wales following the successful testing.
The Ocean Wave Rower, like other wave energy devices, is designed to generate electricity by capturing the motion of the waves.
The device will be built by Pembroke Dock-based boatbuilder Mustang Marine Solutions, which also built the DeltaStream device.
The sea trials, which are scheduled to begin this spring in the Pembrokeshire demonstration zone and to last for two years, will help produce a commercially viable, realworld wave energy converter. Minesto Swedish marine energy company Minesto plans to use innovative underwater kites tethered to the seabed to harness the energy from passing tidal currents.
As they move under the effect of the tidal stream, the kites reach a speed 10 times faster than the current – and because the speed has a cubic relationship with the force, they can generate 1,000 times more power.
In February Minesto announced