re News

PAGE 4

PAGE 10

PAGE 13

PAGE 15

PAGE 17

PAGE 23

GLOBAL MARINE REPORT 2014

Management Services | Tower Support Services

Cable Installation | O&M | Vessel Management

www.offshoremm.com

Rest of world catching up • Carnegie takes on doubters • Maine player flies flag for US innovation • Test centres take shape off American coasts • Asian runners roll up sleeves • China taste-testing technology allsorts

Europe pushes on R&D • Danish showtime in sight • Seabased streamlines for Sweden’s Sotenas • Dublin downpayment for ocean energy • Bimep steps into breach off Spanish coast • Portuguese door opens for AW Energy • Italian technology finds clear water in France • Tocardo going river deep and mountain high

Canada feels the FORCE Nova Scotia supply chain businesses shape offerings for Fundy test centre berth-holders. • ‘Everything but the turbine’ strategy • Plenty of headroom on tidal berth wires • Gold rush in St Lawrence River

French tidal tender aperitif Generous project support package lures major industrials as Paris eyes future export opportunities. • Missing grid link in Paris game plan • Cherbourg ground zero for manufacturers • Wave energy plays second fiddle

UK flirting with defeat Lack of long-term commitment from Westminster tops list of uncertainties hitting investor appetite. • Critical year ahead for leading arrays • Permitting fog obscures community gems • Grid Catch-22 a choker for Scotland

Tidal seeks refinement Low-cost power export from arrays is the next big challenge as suppliers work to optimise turbines. • Anchors cut for ‘disruptive’ cost savings • Wave teams put kilowatt-hours on the clock • Pelamis polishes P2 concept • Fred Olsen joins drift off-grid

Genuinely commercial technologies are years away but the drive to harness the power of the oceans is undiminished. Progress is inextricably linked to government support and France and Canada have

spied an opportunity as the UK comes to terms with the realisation that marine renewables need more time and a lot more money before paying any dividends.

Elsewhere, political support at a European level has increased markedly in recent months and state-backed technological innovation remains strong in Asia.

• For a review and full list of coming wave and tidal projects see pages 2 and 3

Braving thewaters...

A DECADE OF OFFSHORE

EXPERIENCEengineered by

Solid foundation: Voith’s 1MW tidal nacelle on Hatston pier prior to deployment at EMEC’s Fall of Warness tidal test site in Orkney Photo: reNews

marine focus2 reNews 8 May 2014

Global ambitions ebb and flowFrance and Canada are coming up fast as policy blues hit UK, writes Seb Kennedy

Night rider: Andritz Hydro Hammerfest’s 1MW HS1000 tidal turbine has generated more than 1GWh since deployment at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney Photo: ScottishPower Renewables

www.reNews.biz

Global development of wave and tidal energy is gaining momentum in key

international markets and while genuinely commercial technologies remain years away the drive to harness the power of the oceans is undiminished.

Deployment forecasts are as optimistic as ever. Figures compiled by reNews with input from technology and project developers indicate planned installations will edge ahead from 6MW in 2013 to 7MW in 2014.

A pipeline of around 30MW in 2015 would represent an enormous achievement that in reality even the sector’s most zealous proponents would concede lies beyond industry’s grasp at this stage.

Progress is inextricably linked to government support and it is no surprise that countries with co-ordinated, proactive policies and a long-term vision for industrialisation are making

the greatest strides. The UK is still the undisputed world leader in terms of deployment with activity focused on the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney and underpinned by staunch advocates at the top of the Scottish government.

Britain offers arguably the most comprehensive package of capital and revenue support, test facilities and supply chain participants but a broader malaise in the utility sector, compounded by energy policy uncertainty, is casting a shadow.

Many industry observers see UK institutional readiness dissolving just as leading technologies are approaching a critical juncture on the commercialisation path. The shortfall between the financial requirement of scaling up and economic reality is prompting growing calls for a new low risk, low cost approach.

There is a dawning

PROJECT DEVELOPMENT

RESOURCE STUDIES

SITE INVESTIGATION

PROJECT DESIGN & ENGINEERING

CONSENTS & EIA MANAGEMENT

INSTALLATION MANAGEMENT

STRATEGIC CONSULTANCY

www.res-offshore.com/ wave-and-tidal

WAVE &TIDAL End-to-End SupportComprehensive services tailored to your project and the needs of your business

3

8 May 2014 reNews 3marine focus

www.reNews.biz

WORLDWIDE PROJECTS PIPELINEInstalled or ongoing in 2013Developer/s Location MW Technology Type40South Energy Punta Righini, Italy 0.1 R115 WaveAlstom EMEC, Scotland 1 TGL TidalAndritz Hydro Hammerfest EMEC, Scotland 1 HS1000 TidalAquamarine Power EMEC, Scotland 0.8 Oyster 800 WaveAW Energy Peniche, Portugal 0.1 WaveRoller WaveMinesto Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland n/a Deep Green TidalPelamis Wave Power EMEC, Scotland 1.5 P2 WaveVoith Hydro EMEC, Scotland 1 HyTide TidalWello Oy EMEC, Scotland 0.5 Penguin WaveTOTAL 6.0MW

Installed or due in 2014AWS Ocean Energy Lyness, Scotland n/a AWS-III module WaveCarnegie Garden Island, Australia 0.72 Ceto 5 WaveEDF Paimpol, France 0.5 OpenHydro TidalHavkraft TBC, Norway 0.2 H-WEC WaveHyundai Jangjuk, South Korea 1 Hyundai TidalKORDI Yongsoo, South Korea 0.5 OWC WaveNautricity EMEC, Scotland 0.5 Cormat TidalNova Innovation Shetland, Scotland 0.03 Nova-30 TidalOceanflow Energy Sanda Sound, Scotland 0.035 Evopod TidalSeabased Sotenas, Sweden 1 Seabased WaveSeatricity Wave Hub, England n/a Oceanus 2 WaveSME Isle of Wight, England 0.1 Schottel TidalTidal Energy Ltd Ramsey Sound, Wales 0.4 DeltaStream TidalTocardo Nepal 0.4 T100 TidalTocardo Oosterschelde, Holland 1.5 T200 TidalWaveport Bimep, Spain 0.04 OPT PowerBuoy WaveTOTAL 6.925MW

Scheduled for 2015Blue Shark Gironde, France 0.15 Gem4 TidalBluewater EMEC, Scotland TBC Floating demo TidalColumbia Power TBC 0.5 Stingray WaveFlumill Rystraumen, Norway 2.2 Flumill TidalFortum, Wello Oy Wave Hub, England 0.5 Penguin WaveKIOST Jeju, South Korea 0.3 Pendulum WaveNautricity Mull of Kintyre, Scotland 0.5 Cormat TidalOpenHydro, Emera FORCE, Canada 4 Open Centre TidalOWEL Fabtest, England 0.1 OWEL WaveScotrenewables EMEC, Scotland 2 SR2000 TidalSeabased Sotenas, Sweden 9 Seabased WaveSeatricity Wave Hub, England 10 Oceanus 2 WaveTocardo Afsluitdijk, Holland 0.3 T100 TidalVerdant Roosevelt Island, US 0.35 KHPS Gen5 TidalWavestar Hanstholm, Denmark 0.2 Wavestar WaveTOTAL 30MW

Coming in 2016Atlantis Resources Gulf of Kutch, India 1.5 Atlantis AR1500 TidalAtlantis Resources FORCE, Canada 1.5 Atlantis AR1500 TidalBlack Rock FORCE, Canada 2.5 Schottel TidalCarnegie TBC 3 Ceto 6 WaveCTGC Zhejiang, China 7.5 Atlantis AR1500 TidalEDF Raz Blanchard, France 17 OpenHydro TidalKIOST Uldolmok, South Korea 0.3 HAT TidalMeyGen Inner Sound, Scotland 6 Atlantis, Andritz TidalORPC Cobscook Bay, US TBC TidGen TidalPelamis Wave Power EMEC, Scotland 1 P2e WaveScottishPower Renewables Islay, Scotland 10 Andritz, Alstom TidalSiemens MCT, Bluewater FORCE, Canada 2 SeaGen F TidalSiemens MCT Skerries, Wales 10 SeaGen S TidalSnoPUD Admiralty Inlet, US 0.6 OpenHydro TidalVerdant Roosevelt Island, US 0.35 KHPS Gen5 TidalTOTAL 63MW

Due in 2017-18DP Energy, DEME Fair Head, Northern Ireland 10 SeaGen S TidalDP Energy, DEME West Islay, Scotland 10 TBC TidalFortum, DCNS Audierne Bay, France 1.5 WaveRoller WaveGDF Fromveur, France 4 Sabella D15 TidalGDF Raz Blanchard, France 8.4 Voith TidalSAERIEUS Raz Blanchard, France 13 HydroQuest TidalTidal Ventures Torr Head, Northern Ireland TBC OpenHydro TidalUNITe Raz Blanchard, France 10 SeaGen S TidalWestWave County Clare, Ireland 5 Various WaveTOTAL 52MW

Deployments subject to financial close and other factors and liable to change

realisation that marine renewables need more

time, a lot more money and the freedom to fail without policymakers losing their nerve, sources said.

As the UK wavers, France and Canada spy an opportunity. These markets face the same technical issues, as well as their own unique challenges, but an appreciation of the economic prize on offer is galvanising co-ordinated support throughout respective administrations.

The French have tabled array scale grants, a feed-in tariff, 21st century deep-water port infrastructure and some grid capacity relatively close to resource hot-spots and load centres. State-backed utilities, top tier manufacturers and regional authorities are all working towards the same goal of boosting industrial capacity with one eye on future export opportunities.

Canada can be viewed in a similar light as it bids to establish an industry of ancillary goods and services in Nova Scotia to enable leading international tidal technologies of all sizes to adapt to local conditions. The country might need to provide public finance to match its ambitions and some suggest the pace of progress will be influenced by the availability of grants for early arrays.

Political support for ocean energy at a European level has increased markedly in recent months and funds from Brussels are expected to play a central role in de-risking arrays and common infrastructure.

European cash underpins much of the research activity in Scandinavia, the Mediterranean and Low Countries while Ireland is positioning itself to maximise draw-down from Brussels to enable future exploitation of its considerable west coast resource.

Further afield, state-backed technological innovation remains strong in China and South Korea where a handful of concepts appear to be approaching megawatt scale.

Australia is bankrolling wave energy in a serious way while early-stage project development in Gujarat could kick-start the Indian market further down the line.

2

Innovation in the tidal sector is at an all-time high throughout the supply chain in a bid to

slash costs of leading technologies and bring forward potentially more affordable offerings.

Siemens, Andritz, Alstom and others have proven the viability of the horizontal axis tidal turbine and are at varying stages of demonstrating autonomous operations and long-term reliability.

While there are some differences between nacelle and power train design philosophies, the sector has broadly converged on the axial flow approach. The main focus is now on optimisation of

proven turbine solutions and how best to install, accommodate, access and maintain those units at sites with different water depths, seabed conditions and tidal regimes.

Siemens-owned Marine Current Turbines carried out a “deep inspection” of the 1.2MW SeaGen prototype in Strangford Lough to inform design of the new 2MW twin-rotor system.

The next iteration of SeaGen S will feature a pair of three-

bladed nacelles facing in opposite directions and mounted on top of the crossbeam rather than slung underneath.

The redesign is intended to increase efficiency, reduce loads, de-risk installation and improve access, all of which should help cut the levelised cost of energy.

MCT is expected to be deeply involved in implementation of its projects by taking on construction management at

the 10MW Skerries array in Wales as well as supplying services to the facility operator once up and running.

Atlantis Resources and OpenHydro both have a strong emphasis on project development while at the other end of the spectrum Voith and Andritz appear to be focused primarily on supply of nacelles.

Alstom is developing a subsea hub to aggregate power to shore from several of its buoyant subsea turbines via wet-mate connectors through electrical cables adapted to areas with strong tidal flows.

Early arrays are sidestepping the issue by

marine focus4 reNews 8 May 2014

Tidal pioneers seek refinementLow-cost power export from arrays next big challenge on the agenda as suppliers work to optimise horizontal axis turbines

www.reNews.biz

5

We are a technology innovation and knowledge centre. By combining our world-class research, development, demonstration and testing facilities with our leadership, industrial reach

and engineering expertise, we accelerate the design, deployment and commercialisation of renewable energy technology innovation.

ore.catapult.org.uk @orecatapult info@ore.catapult.org.uk tel: 0330 222 0335

‘Deep inspection’: the 1.2MW SeaGen system in Northern Ireland’s Strangford Lough

Photo: Siemens

8 May 2014 reNews 5marine focus

Anchor chains cut in chase for ‘disruptive’ cost savings

www.reNews.biz

Floating and semi-submersible tidal solutions claiming

significant potential for cost cuts will be tested at a variety of scales this year and into 2015.

Technology developer Scotrenewables is aiming to tow test its SR2000 floating device in Orkney by year-end with up to four years of grid-connected trials at the European Marine Energy Centre to follow starting early next year.

Drive trains and internal equipment are being assembled at the company’s Hatston Pier facility, which is intended to serve as the main equipment assembly point for SR2000 arrays in the Pentland Firth and Orkney waters.

Scotrenewables is aiming to deliver the 2MW system for an

all-in cost of £6m, representing what one project developer described as a potentially “disruptive level of cost reduction”.

Siemens MCT has joined the floating crowd via an agreement to integrate the SeaGen nacelle with Dutch offshore engineering outfit Bluewater’s Bluetec platform.

The pact is seen by some as a game-changer for the sector by giving Siemens’ stamp of approval to concepts until now considered on the peripheries of the tidal mainstream.

Others are seeking to follow a similar path. Oceanflow Energy has delivered its semi-submersible 35kW Evopod turbine to Campbeltown ahead of deployment in Sanda Sound, South Kintyre, from June. The

machine is expected to be deployed and retrieved on a periodic basis at the site, which has been chosen for a grid-connected community energy scheme with a seven-year Crown Estate lease.

Oceanflow is marketing its low motion platform to third-party suppliers interested in testing their nacelles in a semi-submersed setting. The company believes the middle of the water column is the best location for energy capture to avoid passing waves that could affect structures operating on the surface.

Elsewhere, Nautricity is targeting 2015 for first power from its 500kW Cormat floating tidal turbine at a site off the Mull of Kintyre.

4

Gentle giant: the 35kW Evopod being deployed off South Kintyre is targeting energy capture in the middle of the water column Photo: Oceanflow Energy

running individual cables from each

turbine to shore. The approach is considered

expensive and unviable for larger projects so collector hubs will form a crucial element of developers’ future array architecture.

The interface between tier one turbine suppliers, project developers and balance of plant contractors is more complex in tidal than comparable sectors such as offshore wind.

Ongoing innovation in installation methodologies, foundations, support structures and electrical infrastructure requires careful collaboration beyond straightforward turbine supply and balance of plant agreements, according to experts.

Risk sharing remains a contentious issue and contractors are said to be reluctant to carry the can on a first-of-a-kind job without any certainty that it will lead to further work. A portfolio approach by developers could help, sources said, by increasing the volume of the prize on offer.

Contracting partnerships are emerging that could help de-risk arrays. McLaughlin & Harvey Offshore, SeaRoc and Balfour Beatty formed a consortium to tackle different contracts within one management package using specialist tidal drilling and foundation technologies and installation vessels.

M&H is involved in advanced works at MCT’s Skerries array and is negotiating the installation contract for the project.

Quality, robust, defensible environmental support for renewables projects

Matt Davies 0131 225 9899 mdavies@environcorp.com | More than 90 offices worldwide, visit environcorp.com

Our services: Site appraisal Feasibility assessment SEA and EIA Planning and consenting Post consent support and monitoring Construction supervision

Our qualities: Projects tailored for each client Strong teamwork ethic, offering continuity of service Excellent technical ability Adding value to projects Innovative thinking Attention to detail

environcorp.com

Leading wave technology developers have made some

progress to prove devices at sea over the past 12 months but there remains no clear winner in the race to commercialisation.

Encouraging performance data from AW Energy’s WaveRoller prototype in Portugal were verified by DNV GL Renewables Advisory. The 100kW device produced 500kWh over 24 hours in a significant wave height of 2.5 metres.

Finnish outfit Wello Oy said its Penguin converter generated peaks of 300kW and 700kW in two to three-metre waves, equating to potential continuous power of 160kW to 180kW.

Aquamarine Power’s Oyster 800 has exported 12MWh to the grid to date and produced 1MWh over five hours. Peak output recorded so far is 566kW, with sustained outputs of 233kW, 216kW and 209kW over 20, 40 and 60-minute periods respectively, all while operating with one of the system’s two cylinders out of action.

Pelamis Wave Power’s P2 machines have generated around 190MWh over 9000 hours

to date and reached what the company described as technology readiness levels of seven, eight and nine out of 10.

There is a broad consensus that results are in some cases promising but remain inconclusive, confirming the need for a step-change in R&D, innovation and at-sea trials.

The priority, experts said, is to improve the investment case and get the sector onto a viable cost reduction trajectory.

Unlike tidal energy, wave is yet to attract significant investment from original equipment manufacturers. However, Pelamis chief executive and founder Richard Yemm said

he believes the differentiation should not be overstated.

Wave suffers from the perception that it is a long way behind tidal but the “reality is by most objective metrics (both) sectors are still strongly overlapped” in terms of progress.

Yemm said a lack of familiarity with the technology is quelling investor appetite. “I need to reduce risk to a lower level for people to be as comfortable investing in a wave farm as for a tidal farm. It is just a fact that we have to accept.”

A cost of energy analysis by Pelamis and the Energy Technologies Institute concluded that wave energy could cost between £2bn and £10bn to reach grid parity with other low carbon sources at around £100 per megawatt-hour.

The figures cover all up-front capital costs and through-life revenue subsidies

marine focus6 reNews 8 May 2014

Wave technology teams put kilowatt-hours on the clock

www.reNews.biz

7

01243 816 606info@searoc.com | www.searoc.comMAKING A DIFFERENCE OFFSHORE

Modular web-based marine, personnel and project monitoring and management tools

OVER A DECADE OF ENSURING YOUR PROJECTS SUCCEED

CONSULTING

QHSEGISMarine EngineeringConstruction Management

CONTRACTING

Temporary Power SolutionsConstructionInstallation

PRODUCTS

SeaZephIROceanPod

Get in touch to see how we can assist

Performer: Wello Oy’s Penguin wave device docked in LynessPhoto: reNews

Commercialisation hopes prove premature but the company’s upcoming machine is being designed to slash cost of energy

8 May 2014 reNews 7marine focus

Pelamis polishes P2

concept

www.reNews.biz

Pelamis Wave Power is designing the next iteration of its attenuator

technology after spending the best part of last year scrutinising the system.

A study funded by the Energy Technologies Institute allowed engineers to overhaul the entire concept to identify the most effective means of reducing the levelised cost of energy from future wave farms.

The main objective was to improve power yield, reduce capital outlays and increase reliability of the P2 (below) to “systematically address impediments to investment in wave farms”.

Founder and chief executive Richard Yemm said his team looked at around 140 innovation options that would deliver the greatest savings while keeping up-front expense and risk to a minimum.

Improvements to control systems, hydrodynamic geometry, power take-off efficiency and an active yaw

system came up as the “lowest hanging fruit” to incorporate into the next device, the P2e.

Some of these have long been on Yemm’s wish list. Pelamis had intended to incorporate a chain-link yaw system and oval tubes into the P2 machines built for ScottishPower and Eon but these measures were dropped due to budgetary constraints and competing commercial priorities at the time.

Yemm conceded that Pelamis had claimed the P2 would be the commercial platform offered to market as a proven product ready for deployment at wave farms. This has manifestly not happened and the P2 was in reality another important but inconclusive step towards a potentially competitive wave offering.

The Pelamis boss also said he recognises the need for a long period of innovation and many future iterations before the full potential of the technology can be demonstrated and proven.

“We have had to pursue short-term commercial objectives of the company to secure investment and meet utility requirements for initial machines.

“Now we have the luxury of the ETI project we will have a machine qualified to the

requirements of project investors,” he said.

The ETI funding allowed engineers to identify and discard the riskier or less cost effective options,

6 paid to early array projects over and above

£100/MWh. In the worst case scenario (£10bn), wave would reach low carbon grid parity in 2040 but this could be brought forward to 2030 and £2bn with an accelerated R&D effort and greater up-front capital support today.

Yemm said the figure might appear large but in fact would represent “an unprecedented achievement, as far as we know the lowest cost commercialisation process ever”.

He cited the many years of payments above £100/MWh in today’s money made to nuclear, wind, solar and other low carbon technologies, and the projected increase of the levy control framework to £8bn per annum by 2020, well before wave is contributing a significant proportion of the mix.

The process of commercialisation would deliver “many billions of pounds gross value added benefit” to the UK economy, eventually opening up a “multi-billion pound export pipeline” opportunity for the country.

Aiming to meet the needs of project investors: Richard Yemm

Photo: reNews

8

Fred Olsen has secured a deep-water berth at the US Marine Corps wave

energy test facility in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, to demonstrate its Bolt Lifesaver technology for navy applications.

The project is part of the Norwegian player’s search for alternative routes to market for its device, for example by powering military hardware in remote ocean locations.

Olsen intends to redeploy the Lifesaver unit at FabTest in Falmouth Bay, south-west England, where trials have been extended by a few months until June.

Lifesaver will be recovered and patched up locally after a

demanding 28 months at sea that included several storms and a direct hit from an unidentified vessel. The buoy will be disassembled and shipped to the Pacific facility.

The company is also in talks with potential non-military customers for autonomous deployments elsewhere that could see a new Lifesaver enter production next year and hit the water in 2016.

Olsen will be absent from the UK wave market until the outlook improves for utility-scale arrays. Director Tore Gulli said: “We will be back in the UK when the market is there. The next stage (of multiple grid-connected devices) is

marine focus8 reNews 8 May 2014

Olsen joins drift off-grid to find a quicker route to pay cheque

www.reNews.biz

9

for example the use of concrete tube sections.

These will be revisited at some point so there will be ongoing cost reduction opportunities well into the future. Control system improvements rank high on the list by offering a potential 50% yield boost and cutting overall levelised cost of energy by a third “from the first machine”.

“Spending five man years on control systems offers much greater rewards than (applying the same resource to developing) concrete structures,” Yemm said.

The ETI project is also helping quantify failure probabilities with a view to Pelamis offering warranties on future machines while ensuring “nobody is taking on an uncalculated risk”.

Core components such as hydraulic cylinders and rams are being put through accelerated life testing with suppliers. A Parker cylinder failed in these trials and as a result the supplier is designing an optimised high fatigue version for Pelamis. The P2e

will be “cost engineered” to deliver a viable wave farm in 2017-18 under the Contract for Difference strike price of £305 per megawatt-hour but to get there Pelamis needs to raise yet more funds.

The Leith-based company, which has to date attracted £85m of public and private investment, will use its latest multi-million-pound allocation from Holyrood’s Marine Renewables Commercialisation Fund to cover some of the costs but there will be a substantial shortfall.

The company estimates the all-in cost for detailed design through to fabrication, assembly, installation and testing of the new machine at the European Marine Energy Centre will be around £30m.

Yemm acknowledged that the figure might appear prohibitively steep for a single 1MW generator but insisted it is part of a clear trajectory towards commercially competitive machines. If finances can be secured the P2e is slated to hit the water in early 2016.

7

too bold, too big and has too much uncertainty.”

Adapting the technology to end-user requirements is not simple and requires engagement from potential customers, he added. Government support is also still required, albeit at a reduced scale.

Others are looking to tap into autonomous markets to secure much-needed revenue streams before the larger utility market prize comes into focus.

Diversification is symptomatic of broader malaise in the utility segment and a dawning realisation of the true timescales and capital requirements for wave farms to achieve commercial viability. The hope is that off-grid markets will develop more quickly, or at least more cheaply.

Ocean Power Technologies has spent several years developing autonomous PowerBuoys and is ramping up efforts to break into the oil and

gas sector. The company is looking at initially modest applications such as delivering around 1kW of constant power to sensors monitoring ageing pipelines in the North Sea.

Oil field operators are said to be interested in familiarising themselves with new power sources in low risk scenarios before incorporating multi-megawatt arrays into core commercial systems, such as pressurisation of depleted oil wells.

“Nobody would put at risk flows of tens of millions of dollars with a new technology,” an industry source said. “As they develop confidence they can see stronger growth but this isn’t going to happen overnight.”

Columbia Power Technologies is meanwhile developing 1kW to 5kW DataRAY and EagleRAY products able to power marine sensors and unmanned underwater vehicles in addition to its 500kW-plus utility products.

Harsh environment: the Bolt Lifesaver wave buoy bears the scars of a collision with an unidentified vessel Photo: Fred Olsen

8 May 2014 reNews 9marine focus

www.reNews.biz

8

capital outlay and “knife-edge” returns. Throw into the equation a lack of certainty that EMR will support a pipeline of second and third-generation projects and the investment case for today’s sites is considerably weakened.

The departure of utilities

from marine is leaving manufacturers and technology investors without a clear view of who will be their eventual customers.

The presence of major players such as Siemens, Alstom and Andritz inspires confidence but maintaining their appetite

for expenditure will be a stern challenge without any assurance that a market will emerge in the UK.

Independent developers are starting to fill the void but their willingness to pick up the slack is sapped by the coalition government’s hostility towards onshore wind and solar.

RES Offshore marine energies manager Ray Hunter said independents can only afford to invest in more speculative sectors like marine when core markets are buoyant.

He cited Westminster’s crackdown on onshore wind as having knock-on effects in marine investment.

Hunter said he has “utmost faith that tidal will succeed” and the technology “will meet its cost objectives” but a strategic view and long-term policy support is essential for industrialisation to happen in the UK.

The RES man called for a concrete policy ambition to ramp up deployment underpinned by a tapered reduction in the marine strike price to support

A perfect storm is brewing in the UK energy sector that threatens to blow

away the country’s global lead in marine renewables. Technical challenges, a financial bottleneck and regulatory upheaval are undermining confidence and choking off investment at the worst possible moment.

The government’s electricity market reform agenda is limiting opportunities and tightening margins while removing the obligation on utilities to participate in renewables, sources said.

There is broad consensus that a lack of visibility of wave and tidal strike prices beyond 2018-19 under the Contracts for Difference support regime is having a major dampening effect.

DECC ring-fenced 100MW of CfDs at £305 per megawatt-hour for the first sites and this level of support is widely seen as appropriate but, as one tidal source put it, “nobody is going to invest on the basis of a single project”.

Early tidal arrays are seen as high-risk propositions with a big

marine focus10 reNews 8 May 2014

UK risks snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

Lack of long-term commitment from Westminster tops list of uncertainties dampening investor appetite in sector

Critical year ahead for leading arrays

www.reNews.biz

Financial close has yet to be confirmed at any of the

three leading array projects in Scottish and Welsh waters as negotiations continue behind the scenes.

Siemens-owned Marine Current Turbines said it is “confident” that its 10MW Skerries project off Anglesey “can achieve financial close soon” with a mix of equity, grant and debt.

All contracts should be placed before year-end for turbine installation and commissioning in 2016.

ScottishPower Renewables said it hopes to “finalise project details” by year-end at its 10MW Islay scheme in south-west Scotland if Andritz’s 1MW tidal turbine testing programme

in Orkney “continues to progress in line with expectations”.

SPR is pursuing “numerous work-streams covering all aspects of the project including the final configuration and the parties involved”. Until then details “are not fixed and remain confidential”. A timeframe for installation was not provided but 2016 is seen as the earliest window for deployment.

Atlantis Resources subsidiary MeyGen is aiming for financial close this quarter at the 6MW Inner Sound project in the Pentland Firth for deployment late next year and commissioning early in 2016.

The developer is believed to be negotiating two £10m loans from the Crown Estate and the

Scottish government but the status of the “commercially sensitive” applications could not be confirmed.

The European Commission could influence progress at all three projects. UK grant awards from the Marine Energy Array Demonstrator fund at Skerries and MeyGen require state aid approval while up-front monetisation of Islay’s NER300 allocation also requires clearance from Brussels.

DECC said it is “liaising with the commission and the MEAD projects to move things forward within the delivery timescales of the scheme” while a decision on NER300 is expected “in due course”, according to the Scottish government. 11

Market in question: Alstom-owned TGL’s 1MW tidal turbine nacelle in waters by Hatston pier in Orkney, with its 500kW predecessor in the background Photo: Alstom

8 May 2014 reNews 11marine focusHigh-cost permitting system obscuring community gems

www.reNews.biz

10

Access to community-scale commercial sites is an

increasingly pressing issue for small independent developers of second-generation wave and tidal devices across the UK.

Concerns are mounting that the regulatory environment and particularly the Crown Estate leasing system are failing to provide a route to market for sub-1MW deployments.

Nursery sites tend to have insufficient resource to make viable returns, sources said, but seeking a commercial lease places a disproportionate cost burden on small projects.

Applications to install an array of 100kW or 200kW turbines in the corner of an existing commercial lease area take time and are not always successful.

A technology company said: “The definition of commercial is that is makes money but it doesn’t have to be utility scale.

“We need a 15 or 20-year lease at a site with a good tidal regime where we can get in and deploy a few hundred kilowatts

in 2015 or 2016 but by the time we go through the process it will be 2017 or 2018.”

Capital costs and risks of large arrays are seen as prohibitive. Demonstrating the commercial viability of tidal is quicker and easier to finance at a smaller scale, as happened in the early days of wind.

“We have proven you can extract tidal energy at big scale but there are other parts of the puzzle — subsea hubs, floating platforms, etc. — that need to be worked through at a smaller scale,” the source said.

The ongoing Crown demonstration zones round could address the issue but the lack of transparency about who is involved prevents partnerships from being formed until lease agreements are signed.

A community scale feed-in tariff would help by enabling access to tax relief through the Enterprise Investment Scheme, which is available to FiT projects but not those receiving Renewables Obligation certificates.

the cost reduction trajectory into the

2020s. “Now the technology is ready to go it is just so galling that what was very strong institutional support is being systematically dismantled,” he said.

“We are in a sense plucking defeat from the jaws of victory in terms of securing industrial benefit for the UK.”

Independents could also struggle to muster the financial clout of utilities that were able to complement grants and equity with strategic balance sheet finance. Simon De Pietro of DP Energy, which acquired the 200MW Westray South tidal project from SSE, said technological immaturity prevents developers tapping debt finance and raises the bar for equity players.

“The returns that equity investors are looking for to take the level of risk (inherent in early tidal arrays) is quite high and I would question whether there are (enough) out there (to fill the gap),” he said.

Manufacturers may have to make strategic project

investments to kick-start the market and even then government grants and soft loans will be “critical” to financing tidal projects thereafter, he added.

The upside is that independents are “more nimble” than utilities and can “think their way out of the box” to get small projects off the drawing board. “It is quite difficult to get a utility investment committee excited about 5MW of any generating technology.”

De Pietro said the predictability of tidal helps to increase revenue certainty and avoid the mistakes of early wind farms, where investors’ fingers were burned when wind speeds dipped below the average in the first years of operation.

“It is not just the grid that benefits from predictability, it helps with finance and that is not being communicated enough.”

The DP boss said it is “fundamental” that the first arrays get built and when they do the mood will change. “A year after Islay, Skerries and MeyGen are installed it will be a very different picture.”

EXH

IBIT

ION

&CO

NFE

REN

CE

www.seawork.comFor information about Seawork 2014, contact the Events Team on:Tel: +44 (0)1329 825335 Email: info@seawork.com

ABP Port of Southampton • 10-12 June 2014

Seawork International is the biggestand fastest-growing UK event for thecommercial marine and workboat sectors, attracting 520 international exhibitors and 7,300 high-calibre visitors from 70 countries

■ Marine Civil Engineering

■ Marine Renewable Energy

■ Port, Harbour & Marina Services

■ Vessel Design, Build & Repair

■ Maritime Security & Defence

■ Hydraulics & Pneumatics

■ Diving & Underwater Technology

■ Safety & Training

■ Power & Propulsion Systems

■ Innovations Showcase

4

marine focus12 reNews 8 May 2014

Grid Catch-22 a choker for Scotland

www.reNews.biz

Grid constraints are threatening to scupper Scotland’s ambition to

launch an industrial renaissance on the back of wave and tidal manufacturing for domestic and export markets.

A chronic lack of transmission capacity in the Scottish islands and UK energy policy uncertainty are together undermining the case for inward investment in marine renewables north of the border.

Technology immaturity is preventing commercial project developers from underwriting a new transmission cable to Orkney but without more export capacity technology demonstration activities cannot expand.

A major report by Xero Energy on the Scottish islands grid access issue estimated the 180MW Orkney upgrade faces a £110m funding gap. Without third-party underwriting of liabilities “reinforcement plans will almost definitely need to be scaled down and/or delayed”.

Xero identified the European

Marine Energy Centre as a key player in breaking the logjam.

The facility could act as an aggregator of grid capacity for research and development purposes as a stepping-stone to deployment at commercial scale. This could be underwritten by European or national grants with a research or economic development remit.

EMEC’s neutrality would sit

well within state aid rules and be preferable to the use of public funds to prop up the cable for commercial projects, Xero said.

The report also cited the potential for existing curtailed onshore wind generators to bolster the investment case but questioned whether the volume of demand “would be sufficient to justify a 180MW cable”. A

30MW distribution reinforcement as outlined in network operator SSEPD’s recent consultation “might be more appropriate”.

EMEC managing director Neil Kermode welcomed the report’s suggestions. “If it helps industry this is something we would support.

“The issue as always is whether we can bring to bear the same drive and 13

Engage with the future

inovo, 121 George Street, Glasgow. Sat Nav ref: G1 1RD

www.inovoglasgow.com

Get engaged:alison.taylor@gva.co.uk

alastair.cumming@gva.co.uk

TO LET 41,647 sq ft of new Grade A Offices. Officially opened in January 2014, inovo is the first building in Glasgow city centre to offer an EPC rating of A, whilst offering a BREEAM Excellent rating.

inovo, developed by Scottish Enterprise, is at the heart of the International Technology and Renewable Energy Zone (ITREZ) and located in Scotland’s most vibrant city. inovo offers companies in the offshore renewables industry the unique opportunity to co-locate beside, and engage with, an alliance of public, private and academic partners to jointly address technology challenges facing the industry.

GVA James Barr

0141 300 8000

gva.co.uk /scotland/4608

Survivor: the Oyster800 near-shore wave converter is going through a second ‘product improvement plan’ after making it through three winters and 10-metre waves Photo: Aquamarine Power

8 May 2014 reNews 13marine focus

Tidal tender aperitif towhet French appetites

Generous project support package lures major industrials as Paris eyes future export opportunities, writes Lisa Louis

www.reNews.biz

France is opening the throttle in the tidal energy sector with a tender for

pilot arrays in two zones that potentially could trigger massive inward investment in the supply chain.

Paris is offering up to €30m capital support for each project and a feed-in tariff of €173 per megawatt-hour, firing up interest from a first-class mix of French utilities, developers and turbine manufacturers.

The tender for small arrays in the Raz Blanchard and Fromveur passage zones, which closes on 16 May, is intended as a stepping stone towards commercial arrays in nearby stretches. Winners will be named in the autumn.

Industry, government and supply chain players share the vision of beefing up French expertise and industrial capacity to exploit global export opportunities.

“If we are able to construct reliable, environmentally sustainable and efficient tidal test farms compatible with existing activities at sea and capable of maintaining an entire supply chain there is no reason why we can’t set up commercial tidal farms all over of the world,” said Claude Mimi, deputy managing director at GDF Suez Futures Energies.

The Raz Blanchard zone 2km

12 vision that saw EMEC set up in the first place to

tackle this very challenging issue facing us.”

Kermode said the estimated £30m price tag for SSEPD’s 30MW distribution reinforcement should not be a show-stopper and called for a co-ordinated effort from Ofgem, DECC, National Grid, the Scottish government and other stakeholders to make it a reality.

Elsewhere at EMEC, Aquamarine continues to upgrade its Oyster 800 near-shore wave converter at the Billia Croo test site under a second “product improvement plan” to increase reliability of core components.

Oyster will be back up and running “later this year”.

Pelamis Wave Power redeployed one of its P2 converters at Billia Croo and is also carrying out upgrade works at Lyness.

Alstom, Andritz and Voith are all testing respective megawatt-scale tidal turbine designs at the Fall of Warness site.

Alstom has taken its 1MW turbine up to full power since redeployment in mid-April and is planning to ramp up “endurance runs” in May.

The French outfit will review options for the device when its contract with the Energy Technologies Institute’s Redapt project expires towards the end of the year.

The company’s engineers in Bristol are said to be keen to keep generating volumes of power if this can be done in a cost effective way.

In Wales, Tidal Energy Ltd is on track to install its 300kW DeltaStream demonstrator at Ramsey Sound off Pembrokeshire later this year for a 12-month testing period.

Fabrication is well underway and all major components have been delivered to Pembroke Port, Milford Haven, for final assembly.

• Resolute Marine Energy has completed tank tests of its submerged flap wave energy converter at the Orion Energy Centre, the Inverness facility developed by Voith Hydro for its mothballed Wavegen concept.

off Lower Normandy, which is divided into six separate test areas with waters up to 55 metres deep, has attracted strongest interest from bidders.

GDF Suez has signed alliance agreements with German and French turbine suppliers Voith and Alstom at the site. Naval shipyard CMN’s subsidiary ACE is also part of the consortium, which proposes up to six Voith machines rated at 1.4MW.

The project has also been put forward by the French government for the European Commission’s NER300 funding

scheme with a decision due by June. Success would force GDF to withdraw the project from the French tender as developers may only receive one subsidy.

Eole-RES, the French arm of British developer RES, has joined the race with local outfit UNITe and Germany’s Siemens for a 10MW deployment of surface-piercing SeaGen S turbines in the zone.

French officials had expressed a preference for subsea turbines due to navigational constraints in the English Channel but the joint 14

Off-grid trials: OpenHydro’s 16-metre Open Centre turbine emerged unscathed from EDF’s Paimpol test site off Brittany last month Photo: DCNS

Missing link in Paris game planGrid connection constraints

in the English Channel are a potential hurdle for France’s tidal ambitions. Power export from initial arrays in the Fromveur passage tidal zone could hinge on new energy storage capacity on the island of Ushant.

GDF Suez and French turbine player Sabella are proposing a 6MWh lithium-ion battery to absorb power from four 1MW D15 tidal turbines, which could outstrip local consumption on the island. Sabella’s ambitions in the area for 200MW by 2020

would require a new subsea cable to the mainland that would have to pass through a busy shipping and submarine traffic area, as well as a nature reserve.

In addition, distribution network operator ERDF and transmission company RTE have yet to confirm how they will bring ashore power from the Raz Blanchard.

High voltage upgrades are needed but RTE is said to be reluctant to give any connection pledges for a technology that is still at the pre-commercial phase of development.

venture believes concerns are misplaced due to

the high visibility of the SeaGen tower to passing vessels.

RES Offshore marine energies manager Ray Hunter said it would be unwise for any technologies to be ruled out of the French tender at this early stage.

EDF, DCNS and OpenHydro will submit a 17MW test farm bid for Raz Blanchard that has also been put forward for NER300 round two funding.

In addition to the GDF Suez-led project effort, CMN has teamed up with French turbine company HydroQuest, developer Valorem and the University of Caen for a 10-turbine, 13MW tidal test farm sited in the Raz Blanchard under the SAERIUS consortium banner.

The management of Atlantis Resources has meanwhile ruled out participating in the French tidal tender with Areva Renouvelables.

The tidal player said it has “no plans” to bid despite an agreement last year to look at assembling turbines at Areva’s new offshore wind factory in Le Havre.

marine focus14 reNews 8 May 2014

www.reNews.biz

The Port of Cherbourg is aiming to take centre stage in the roll-out of tidal turbines and offshore wind in French waters.

An ambitious €100m quay extension and land reclamation project is well underway. The expansion will provide space for fabrication, assembly, laydown and logistical operations for offshore wind and tidal turbine farms.

Voith and OpenHydro have both committed to manufacturing at the port and Alstom and Siemens-owned Marine Current Turbines are expected to have a presence in the area if successful in the French tidal tender.

“We intend to set up an entire tidal energy supply chain at the port of Cherbourg,” said Frédéric Le-Lidec, director of naval defence group DCNS’s marine renewable energy business unit.

The company is in talks with a number of French suppliers

and is expected to invest between €250m and €300m in facilities at Cherbourg where OpenHydro turbines can be produced for arrays off Normandy, Alderney and elsewhere.

OpenHydro and DCNS signed a joint venture with Alderney Renewable Energy last month to deploy a 300MW tidal farm off the Channel Island by 2020 when it will be connected to the French and UK power grids.

Project vehicle Race Tidal will use data from France’s Raz Blanchard zone to progress consenting in Alderney waters. The deal is confirmation that island authorities have dropped plans for a pilot tidal array to focus instead on a commercial

farm once the Open Centre technology is proven in France and Canada.

Elsewhere, EDF is mulling the next phase of its Paimpol test site off Brittany after OpenHydro recovered a 16-metre turbine following 1500 hours of off-grid trials. A mini-array of two or more devices is mooted but installation hinges on development of new electrical connection technology, sources said.

A subsea power export cable has already been laid at the site. GE Power Conversion is said to be developing a means of connecting multiple Open Centre turbines to a subsea hub to aggregate power to shore.

13

Port of call: offshore wind is the driving force behind Cherbourg’s expansion but tidal players are also queuing up to take advantage of its deep waters and heavy lift capabilities Photo: reNews

Cherbourg ground zero for a new manufacturing industry

Wave energy plays second fiddleWave energy has taken a

back seat in France while momentum builds around tidal power. “Whereas in the UK the wave energy sector seems to be carried along by the tidal sector, the French are seemingly less inclined to bet on a second and a lot less advanced energy at the same time,” said Antoine Rabain, manager of consultancy Indicta’s energy and resources department.

Alstom has relinquished its stake in Scottish wave developer AWS while DCNS has had to scrap a Ceto wave device that was rendered inoperable after being modified for a project off Réunion island in the Indian Ocean.

Réunion remains an attractive site but its future will depend on Carnegie Wave Energy’s progress with the next

iteration of the Ceto technology in Australia, DCNS said.

The naval defence giant is meanwhile targeting 2017 for a 1.5MW pilot wave array featuring up to three of AW Energy’s WaveRoller converters 5km off the coast of Brittany in Audierne Bay.

The joint venture with Finnish utility Fortum is verifying acceptability among local fishermen and other stakeholders and the potential for a local supply chain. Fortum is expected to make an investment decision next year ahead of construction in 2016 and completion a year later.

Other French wave devices under development include D2M’s Bilboquet, Hydrocap’s Seacap, SBM Offshore’s S3 and Ecole Centrale de Nantes’ Searev.

8 May 2014 reNews 15marine focus

Canadian supply chain feels FORCENova Scotia businesses shape offerings for Fundy berth-holders, writes Seb Kennedy

www.reNews.biz

Supply chain companies on Canada’s eastern seaboard are viewing tidal energy as

a promising new economic opportunity as developers inch towards the first grid-connected turbine deployments in the Bay of Fundy.

Businesses active in naval defence, offshore oil and gas, shipbuilding and fisheries as well as ocean research are all looking at adapting their expertise to Nova Scotia’s emerging tidal industry.

“We are trying to build capacity,” said Melissa Oldreive, policy analyst at the Nova Scotia Department of Energy. “It will be economically feasible for berth holders (at the Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy) to find services locally.

“We can’t expect them to do everything in Nova Scotia but we expect to get a portion of the work,” she said.

The ability to forge local links was a factor in awarding the two remaining FORCE berths to consortia featuring turbines from Ireland’s OpenHydro and Schottel of Germany.

Both groups will tap local industrial partners for fabrication, heavy lift equipment, offshore operations, ocean research and other services. A spokesperson

Emerging industry: surveying underway in the Minas Passage where developers hope to install the first small tidal arrays within the next few years Photo: FORCE

‘Everything but the turbine’ strategy offers rich pickingsNova Scotia’s game plan is to

create an export industry around secondary products and processes for tidal energy hardware developed in Europe and other international markets.

“The real economic opportunity lies in everything that surrounds the turbine,” said Chris Campbell, executive director of industry association Marine Renewables Canada.

“If the nacelle and drive train is only 30% of the project cost then the view is let’s focus on the other 70% and be the

best at that.” So the race is on to develop world-beating goods and services required to deploy, accommodate, operate and retrieve grid-connected generators in high resource deep-water tidal rips.

Campbell said Canada must accept the challenge of addressing disproportionate balance of plant costs in order to tap the economic opportunity of tidal power. “We have to be able to do this more quickly, simply and affordably than anyone else.” The

for the DoE said local content “was not a specific condition” but applicants were asked to indicate how their project would support the objectives of the Province’s Marine Renewable Energy Strategy, including “how their proposal added value to industry development as well as research opportunities in Nova Scotia”.

Schottel is part of the Black Rock Tidal Power consortium that includes naval architects, marine service outfits, acoustics specialists, numerical engineers and survey consultants from the province. Black Rock is aiming to kick off procurement next

year for a 1.1MW array of 16 turbines on Tidal Stream’s Triton semi-submersible platform.

Installation is planned for early 2016 and the full complement of 36 three-bladed machines will be rolled out later that year.

Black Rock had carried out characterisation work for its bid for FORCE berth D but was eventually awarded a different slot vacated by Alstom, so further site-specific studies are required.

OpenHydro will return to the Bay of Fundy in late 2015 with a pair of 2MW-rated tidal

turbines, boasting 70% local economic content, in partnership with Nova Scotia-based utility Emera. Irving Shipbuilding will fabricate support structures and Atlantic Towing will support offshore operations.

Their deployment will be the first in the Fundy since an OpenHydro turbine was damaged in 2009 trials. The setback highlighted not only the bay’s destructive tidal forces but the need to improve deployment methodologies to avoid losing long periods of time when attempting to retrieve turbines.

The decision to exclude DP Energy and Andritz Hydro Hammerfest from the FORCE tenders prompted surprise from some in the tidal community.

One local source said Nova Scotia would benefit not only from testing a turbine technology with more than 1GWh of output under its belt but also DP Energy’s two decades of experience securing finance for hundreds of megawatts of wind projects.

Companies like DP “might find themselves sucked back into the mix” when the Fundy consortia start looking seriously at how to fund arrays, a source said.16

marine focus16 reNews 8 May 2014

Gold rush in St Lawrence River

Plenty of headroom on tidal berth wires

www.reNews.biz

Montreal turbine technology company RER Hydro is

laying the groundwork for what could become the world’s largest and most expensive hydrokinetic array in the St Lawrence River, Quebec.

RER and aerospace industrial partner Boeing will install six turbines totalling 750kW at an estimated cost of C$51.5m as soon as this year.

A further C$81m would then be spent on a demonstration

fleet of 40 turbines beginning in 2016.

The government of Quebec could contribute up to C$85m in equity and loans on top of the C$3m it has already handed RER for its C$230m prototype testing phase in the river, which lasted three years.

The project is based on RER’s kinetic energy recovery turbine, or TREK, which underwent trials in Montreal’s old harbour from 2010.

15

The Minas Passage will host electrical infrastructure for the first time this year

when four cables are installed to export power from the FORCE tidal test berths.

Each cable will be able to carry 16MW but onshore transformer capacity will be limited to 4MW in the first phase.

The provincial government has provided funding to expand this to 20MW and FORCE will assess transformer and other upgrades in advance of turbine deployments.

Expansion will dovetail with the circa-20MW of tidal capacity that officials expect to approve under the current feed-in tariff structure so developers should be able to progress plans for mini-arrays without having to wait for upgrades.

Further funding would likely be needed to make full use of the cables’ combined 64MW potential but technically the expansion is not viewed as problematic. Nova Scotia will

inevitably run into transmission pinch-points further down the line but FORCE staff believe the longer-term vision of hundreds of megawatts of tidal energy is a possibility across the province.

“There will likely be 500MW to 600MW of available capacity and demand within the provincial system. Beyond that we expect significant upgrades would be needed to move 2000MW-plus to other provinces and/or the New England market,” a spokesman said.

Tocardo shows community spiritCommercial interest in

community-scale tidal is growing in Nova Scotia. Dutch turbine specialist Tocardo is hoping to tap into the market by establishing an assembly and manufacturing plant in the province.

The company is working with Tribute Resources and Fundy Tidal to develop 3MW of projects awarded community feed-in tariffs (COMFIT) at three locations in the Bay of Fundy.

The first stage could see a

1.95MW array of Tocardo T200 tidal turbines in the Digby Gut.

Five COMFIT projects are at the environmental assessment and site characterisation phase. Initial deployments could start as soon as next year, pending establishment of community trusts owned 50% by local people and project fundraising.

In British Columbia, Western Tidal Holdings has filed investigative permits at two of 14 tidal sites in the province in partnership with Tocardo.

province’s intimate understanding of the

marine environment is another tool for the sector, according to Melissa Oldreive of the Nova Scotia Department of Energy.

“We have a large technology and ocean research body of knowledge. We have one of the world’s largest concentrations of ocean researchers and our ocean technology sector is quite big too.”

Development in the Bay of Fundy is underpinned by a stated policy ambition to connect 300MW of tidal arrays to the grid post-2020 and a feed-in tariff support regime with a choice of rates.

The ‘test’ option allows a single device to attract an initially high rate of C$575 per megawatt-hour for three years followed by a 15-year tariff of C$495/MWh for further installations. An alternative ‘developmental’ tariff offers C$530/MWh over 15 years for an array.

In all cases the rate drops after a certain amount of power is generated into the grid to reflect increasing efficiencies

and economies of scale. The department said a FiT call will take place later this spring “and so the amounts (requested by each berth-holder) will be confirmed at that time”.

The tariff was designed to support different technologies and strategies in combination with grant support but Marine Renewables Canada said this will not be easy to find. The association is seeking capital support that will reduce risks by focusing on common issues while adding “Canadian value” wherever possible.

Atlantis Resources already holds a conditional C$5m grant from Sustainable Development Technology Canada for deployment of a 1.5MW AR1500 in 2016 in partnership with Lockheed Martin and Irving Shipbuilding.

Siemens-owned Marine Current Turbines holds the remaining berth with Bluewater Energy Services and Minas Energy. MCT will mount two 1MW nacelles on Bluewater’s Bluetec floating platform to form a deep-water offering known as SeaGen F.

Blizzard barge: a subsea data cable being installed in the Minas Passage Photo: FORCE

Making wavesin marine energy

royalhaskoningdhv.com/renewables

We are the leading environmental, EIA and consenting consultancy in the sector. Over 10 years’ experience assisting clients gain consent on many of the UK’s leading tidal and wave projects.We can help with any EIA, consenting, HSE or technical engineering problems or queries.We offer world class expertise in:■ Comprehensive environmental and EIA services■ Project consenting services■ Pre-construction services■ CDM and H&S■ Port and harbour design and studies■ Post consent monitoring

8 May 2014 reNews 17marine focus

www.reNews.biz

Showtime in sight for Denmark

Developers scale up their technologies to prepare for commercial era in second half of decade, writes Todd Westbrook

Upgrade programme: the float-based WaveStar being returned to harbour

Photo: Wavestar

18

Leading Danish marine energy developers are shifting up a gear with

proven design concepts ahead of proposed commercial-scale deployments in open seas in the second half of the decade.

Brondby outfit Wavestar is planning to complete the evolution from demonstrator to array with its float-based technology in 2017 as part of a combined offshore wind and wave farm in European waters.

The company has joined forces with a number of industrial partners to bid for a project thought to be the 300MW Mermaid off Belgium and will be upgrading its existing demo unit off Hanstholm in part to prove ongoing improvements to the technology.

Wavestar brought its existing device into harbour from open waters last autumn and will carry out upgrades including the installation of two additional,

larger six-metre float units and the inclusion of new higher efficiency power take-off units.

The company will test the use of concrete for floats and arms, and “a new and better material” for bearings on cylinders and arms, both designed to optimise component lifetimes.

The work on what will be an around 200kW unit with a total of four floats will take at least a year. The Wavestar device will then be redeployed in 2015 at a new location off Hanstholm, which will be farther from shore in a more demanding wave regime.

For the commercial phase in the wind and wave tie-up, Wavestar will deploy 1MW devices with 20 six-metre floats each and an optimised, lower-cost foundation design.

Compatriot developer Floating Power Point is meanwhile in discussions

You’re Invited!

ICOE2014CANADA.ORG

Canada hosts the 5th International Conference on Ocean Energy

NOVEMBER 4-6, 2014 Halifax, Nova Scotia CanadaThree days where industry, researchers and governments collaborate:

• Plenary, Industry and Poster Sessions• Exhibition• Technical & Industry Site Visits• Gala Dinner & Welcome Reception• Networking Opportunities

The global event focused on the industrial development of marine renewable energy

Seabased has kicked off production of next-generation

linear point generators for its Sotenas project off Sweden’s south-west coast, where installation of a 1MW first phase was due to begin in April.

The company, along with partners Fortum and the Swedish Energy Agency, is hoping to complete deployment of 34 seabed-mounted units and switchgear before the end of May. A 9.5km, 11kV cable to an onshore connection point was laid by Baltic Offshore last year.

Seabased has refined its around 30kW linear system over the past year and the first of the new units passed their factory acceptance test last month. A new magnet derived from steel industry by-products replaces the previous rare earth component and the overall design has been streamlined with unit height reduced from around 10 metres to seven metres.

A second 9MW phase, featuring 300 Seabased units, is due to be installed in 2015 at the project, which was originally budgeted

at Skr259m in 2009 but which has since crept up by an unspecified amount.

Units are being fabricated at the company’s Lysekil facility, where plans for a larger factory are already progressing. Chief executive Billy Johansson said he hopes to have the new plant on-line in time to produce at least some of the units for the Sotenas second phase.

A planned Skr100m fundraising will help to bankroll the new factory, building on an ongoing Skr1m share offering

for existing investors. The company is targeting commercial-scale deployments after mid-decade in markets including the UK, France and Norway.

Initiatives in the latter country include an ongoing tie-up with Trondheim company Ocean Energy, which is developing a deep-water version of the Seabased machine called the Storm Buoy.

Elsewhere in Norway, Havkraft has received verification of its wave technology from Marintek Sintef and plans to deploy a 200kW H-WEC device for off-grid trials in June.

Fabrication of the full-scale converter kicked off last autumn at Stadyard near Maloy. The trials could lead to a 1MW-rated demonstration array of modules in 2015.

Compatriot developer Flumill had originally planned to deploy a 2.2MW tidal screw in the waters near Rystraumen in Troms, northern Norway, this year. Design work is at an advanced stage but final funding elements remain to be secured, pushing work in the water to 2015. A grid connection and planning permission are already in hand.

Other Norwegian companies chasing the marine dream include the Straum Group through its OWC Power and Hydra Tidal businesses. The latter’s Morild II twin-bladed floating tidal device was recently overhauled in port ahead of a planned redeployment.

Tidal Sails is also active in Norway with a proposed 3MW demo near Kvalsundet.

marine focus18 reNews 8 May 2014

Seabased streamlines for Sotenas

www.reNews.biz

18

Thicket: design changes have resulted in more compact linear point generator units for Seabased’s 1MW project off Sweden Photo: Seabased

with three potential partners for commercial

deployment of its standalone wind and wave technology in 2016-17, followed by an initial small array in 2018-20.

The company said all potential projects are in northern Europe and that it has paved the way for roll-out by increasing its capital base through a 2013 share issue and the securing of debt finance.

Final testing of FPP’s grid-connected P37 device was completed at the end of last year following a total of 24 months of operation and the unit has now been relocated to Nakskov harbour on Lolland as a “show piece”.

The P37 averaged 30% “wave to wire efficiency”, increasing to 35% in the final test phase when an improved control algorithm was deployed. Wind stability was within design boundaries and 33kW turbines produced power continuously to the grid.

Survivability was also proved, particularly during the so-called Saint Jude storm last autumn when the P37 weathered 30-metre per second average winds and 50m/s gusts.

FPP is now completing designs for its upgraded P80 unit, which will feature 2.6MW of wave power across a number of absorbers and 5MW of wind.

Tank testing will take place in Nantes, France, later this year while power take-off “dry testing” is kicking off in both Denmark and the UK. Key partners in the development of the P80 include Fritz Schur Energy, Siemens and BHR. Total cost of the next-generation deployment is expected to be at least €15m.

Elsewhere, Leancon is planning to test a 1:10 scale demo of its wave technology starting in August on the back of a grant from Energinet.dk. The 24-metre wide V-shaped unit will be used to determine load factors and verify energy production from a site in the Nissum Bredning.

Denmark has 14 active wave projects, of which five have taken to open waters. In addition to Wavestar, FPP and Leancon, the latter category includes Wave Dragon and Waveplane.

Simple, reliable, and effective subsea cable engineering. Consultancy, Project Management, Products, and Personnel. Renewables Specialists.

www.eta-ltd.com - t. +44 1794 521 215

Tough conditions?

Cables, solved by experience.

8 May 2014 reNews 19comment

www.reNews.biz

Political recognition at the European Union level of the ocean energy opportunity

is growing at a pivotal time for broader energy policy in Brussels. The EU has just redefined its budget for the next seven-year period and heated negotiations for its 2030 climate and energy targets are in full swing.

Geopolitical developments are pushing the EU to rethink its energy security strategy amid existing concerns about air pollution and climate change. Into this context come technological developments and member state actions that have brought ocean energy to the brink of commercialisation.

The prize at stake is a new industrial sector for Europe.While movement in Brussels is encouraging, the facts on the ground tell a different story.

The barriers to getting the first ocean energy arrays into the water are real and significant. Grid access, reliability, survivability and affordability remain ongoing concerns.

Overcoming these barriers in times of short private capital and public funding requires a tactical approach.

For this reason the industry last year called on the European Commission to create a public space for discussions focused on co-operation, co-ordination and reducing risk. The result was last month’s launch of the Ocean Energy Forum.

Work will be performed in three areas, namely technology, finance and environmental issues. While still in its infancy, there are promising signs this initiative has the political and industrial will to find the optimal framework to bring ocean energy into the mainstream.

Political backing has been incredibly strong from an unprecedented three Directorates

of the European Commission. Support from regional authorities has also been encouraging as they have come to realise that the greatest benefits from this sector will be reaped in areas along their coastline.

This sector is not just about regional jobs or the ability to generate clean power from an untapped resource, however, it is also about pan-European benefits to the supply chain.

This is why Ocean Energy Europe recently launched TIP Ocean, the Technology and Innovation Platform for Ocean Energy, to force the industry to build consensus around funding priorities for the coming decade.

Political momentum around ocean energy has already taken the sector into the mainstream at EU level via incorporation into

the Strategic Energy Technology Plan, the pillar of European energy technology policy. For the first time, the sector is being asked to consider its place in the EU’s energy mix.

We will soon start to see the results of these initiatives as concrete actions when EU funding comes into the sector through programmes such as Horizon 2020 and INTERREG.

The European Commission already confirmed that 7.5% of proposals in a competitive Horizon 2020 call across seven energy technologies were from ocean renewables.

The past 12 months has seen the EU clearly come out in favour of ocean energy. This alone will not ensure the success of the sector but slowly it is putting in place the necessary structures to get the regulatory framework right, to ensure that funding is applied most efficiently and to foster co-operation.

Potential industrial benefits drive emergence of concrete support initiatives, writes Sian George

EU puts shoulder to the wheel

Sian George is chief executive of Brussels-based trade association Ocean Energy Europe

Global Solutions for Future Challenges

DEME Blue Energy | Wave & Tidal Solutions –Strong partner in development

DEME has been a top player worldwide in dredging, environmental and

marine engineering for over 150 years.

Today the multidisciplinary expertise of DEME subsidiaries Offshore Wind

Assistance (OWA), Tideway BV, GeoSea NV, and DEME Blue Energy NV, in

project development and hydraulic engineering enables us to offer a total

package of services to design, build, operate and maintain offshore wind,

wave and tidal energy farms.

D.E.M.E. Blue Energy nvMember of the DEME Groupwww.deme-group.com

DEME: creating land for the future

The Irish wave and tidal energy sector is enjoying a moment in the sun after

the government finally made good on promises to deliver a more streamlined and supportive regime for the technology.

Marine Renewables Industry Association chairman Peter Coyle said the sector is in a significantly better place than 12 months ago.

“A comprehensive maritime and foreshore amendment Bill has been published and is on the government’s legislative programme for this year.”

The previous regime dated back to the 1930s and proved unwieldy for modern marine energy projects.

“Secondly, we have an Offshore Renewable Energy Development Plan, which represents a commitment across the whole of government,” Coyle said. Paramount among its provisions is a tariff of €260 per megawatt-hour for wave and tidal projects in the Republic.

The subsidy is one of the final pieces in the jigsaw for the state’s flagship wave energy project, ESB’s Westwave array, which has made some progress this year despite allowing a €20m NER300 allocation from Europe to slide.

NER300 round-two funds are

now being sought that will allow a later deployment in 2018, giving time for wave technologies to mature.

Project manager James Tedd said ESB has selected a site off Doonbeg in County Clare that ticks a lot of boxes. “It has grid connection options over the period of time for the project, has port options, (and) has options for deep and shallow wave energy converters.”

The semi-state developer has also narrowed down its list of potential technology partners for the array, having returned to the market towards the end of 2013. The five in the running are Pelamis, Aquamarine, AW Energy, Wello and Oceanlinx, despite the latter’s current financial difficulties.

Carnegie Wave Energy was expected to feature but sources said its Ceto technology did not qualify since it has yet to be grid-connected.

The list will be whittled down to three before a planning application is submitted in time to make a final investment decision in summer 2016 and pursue operations in summer 2018.

Ireland is playing the long

game safe in the knowledge that commercial interest will be sustained due to the sheer scale of the resource off the west coast.

Westwave is seen as the most direct route for leading technologies to tap that energy and the eventual winner or winners stand to gain a considerable commercial advantage in the European wave sector.

Local authorities are also doing their bit. A raft of county development plans, including in Clare where ESB is putting down roots, have emerged in support of hosting marine energy projects.

MRIA chief Coyle said Ireland is catching up with leading marine energy countries such as Scotland. “We’re recovering from an economic recession, and we’re recovering well. We don’t face the same political

uncertainty that Scotland perhaps does.”

He added that the modest resources expended to date have “been spent wisely and (in a way that is) consistent with the approach we’ve taken before in areas like aerospace and software.”

Early stage research expertise is an important element of the Irish offering. Ground was broken on the jewel in Ireland’s research crown, the €15.2m Beaufort Laboratory in University College Cork, late last year.

The lab will be the nerve centre of the Irish Maritime and Energy Resource Cluster (IMERC) that will house the flagship €16.5m National Ocean Test facility. Two live test sites will also allow companies to deploy scale models.

The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland is meanwhile hoping to lure more clients to its Atlantic Marine Energy Test Site in Belmullet, County Mayo, after Australia’s Marine Power Technologies signed on the dotted line last year.

Elsewhere, the SmartBay Ireland quarter-scale test site in Spiddal, County Galway, is deploying a cable that will be able to accommodate two wave energy devices simultaneously.

marine focus20 reNews 8 May 2014

Dublin downpayment for sectorFeed-in tariff seals deal for Westwave development, writes Jack Horgan-Jones

www.reNews.biz

Backers of a pair of tidal energy projects off Northern

Ireland are targeting mini-array deployments in the medium term that could lead to more ambitious operations by 2020.

A DP Energy and DEME Blue Energy joint venture is designing a sub-10MW array of Siemens’ SeaGen turbines for deployment at Fair Head.

Project leader Simon De Pietro said ideally the partners will submit a planning application by the end of this year, achieve consent by the middle of 2015 and have machines in the water by 2017.

Water depths at the site present a headache, De Pietro said. “The minimum is 40 metres reaching out to 50 metres.

That’s a stretch for some of the technologies and one of the challenges we face.”

Nonetheless, De Pietro said tight timelines mean he will push ahead with the mini-array and planning for the full-scale project in tandem. “If you just wait until you’ve got a year’s operational data on your baby project we’ll be five, six, seven years down the road, and all the 2020 aspirations will be gone.”

Near-neighbour Tidal Ventures, an alliance between Irish utility Bord Gais and French-backed technology player OpenHydro, is also planning a staged deployment off Torr Head.

BG project manager Donal O’Sullivan said: “We’re looking

at phasing the developments, (with) an up to 30MW deployment and then follow in with the remaining 70MW for 2020.”

The partners have been gathering bird and mammal data for nearly a year and have deployed and retrieved four acoustic resource testing devices for data analysis. A planning application for the first 30MW should be in before the year-end.

The perennial issue of grid in Northern Ireland has now raised its head in the tidal space with weak infrastructure in the north-east the prime motivator behind a joint connection feasibility study by the two projects.

OpenHydro chief executive James Ives said making the link

work is the most pressing issue for what he sees as a very positive site. Both undersea and overland options are being explored.

Elsewhere, Swedish outfit Minesto is planning to gut its Deep Green tidal kite tested in Strangford Lough last year ahead of redeployment this summer. New components are on the menu as part of an R&D upgrade that managing director Anders Jansson said should boost output.

Minesto plans to keep the device in Strangford “for several years”, although the company is looking at a second deployment elsewhere with Taiwan, Chile and Norway in the running.

Tidal leaders in North put heads together on grid

In the Westwave running: the Waveroller device Photo: AW Energy

Spain is commissioning its first offshore wave energy test facility in time to

provide an alternative deployment site for a pilot project that has run aground.

The Biscay Marine Energy Platform (Bimep) off the north coast village of Armintza-Lemoiz is nearing physical completion and an official launch is said to be imminent.

The 20MW grid-connected facility boasts four berths located in one of the highest resource areas off the Basque coast with an estimated potential of 21kW per metre of wave frontage.

Power from each 5MW deployment area is aggregated into a single export cable via a subsea collector pod.

The first tenant could be the Waveport consortium, a European Commissioned-funded collaborative project to trial innovative wave prediction technology developed by US outfit Ocean Power Technologies.

The initiative, originally planned for Portuguese waters, has hit difficulties at its preferred deployment site off Santoña, northern Spain.

The Cantabrian regional

government is a joint venture partner at Santoña and officials had pledged to finance offshore power infrastructure for the site.

However, Cantabria was badly knocked by the economic crisis in Spain and promised funds did not materialise.

Consenting and installation efforts have now been halted and Waveport is renegotiating with Brussels to relocate to Bimep, which lies 30km by sea to the east of Santoña.

An agreement has yet to be signed with the test centre but the 40kW-rated Waveport PowerBuoy is midway through fabrication and could be deployed as early as July.

The build has progressed despite commercial challenges thrown up by the euro-zone recession.

The creditworthiness of some Spanish companies has been called into question, undermining suppliers’ trust about selling to others that are perfectly able to pay their dues, sources said.

Work-streams that should be

straightforward, for example ordering a consignment of marine paint, now require time-consuming bilateral negotiations.

The PowerBuoy is starting to take shape, however.

The central spar of the device is being transported to a shipyard in Santander, and the heave plate and bridge structure will be shipped to the final assembly site in short order.

Deployment is earmarked for the summer and a firm date will be set during talks with Bimep.

Elsewhere, Cantabrian fabricator Degima has shipped the final component for a point absorber proof of concept designed by Santander outfit Wedge to a deployment site in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

The linear generator at the heart of the device has been laboratory tested.

The fully assembled wave unit will be tested in seas off Puerto de La Luz under the EU-funded Undigen consortium project.

8 May 2014 reNews 21marine focusBimep steps into breach off the Spanish coastline

Wave test centre set to offer berths for homeless projects, writes Seb Kennedy

www.reNews.biz

Spain’s power sector deficit and retrospective cuts to

wind and solar supports mean a feed-in tariff for marine arrays is inconceivable for the foreseeable future.

This has halted ambitions for commercial project development in Spain but modest funds are keeping ocean energy R&D projects ticking over.

Magallanes Renovables is developing the country’s first floating tidal stream platform that could in the future support a megawatt-scale turbine.

The Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) is leading the PROCODAC-GESMEY project to develop a deep-water semi-buoyant ocean current converter, and Pipo Systems continues to pursue autonomous and utility-scale wave power concepts.

Federal and regional government officials are said to be keen to keep alive future global opportunities for local technology companies but opportunities for second and third-tier suppliers are few and far between.

Basque marine energy supply chain cluster Itsasolutions has all but disbanded after taking a view that the volume of work coming their way will remain small for years to come. Members are focusing on developing industrial processes that could have commercial value to ocean industries further down the line, sources said.

Portugal’s flagship 12MW ocean energy test centre has

stalled after running into fresh delays at the planning phase.

The Ocean Plug facility appears to be dormant while Portugal’s grid operator REN seeks to modify the concession to allow floating offshore wind turbines to be installed in the pilot zone off São Pedro de Moel.

REN’s concession lasts 45 years but there is no penalty for non-implementation, local sources said, and without concrete commercial project proposals it is difficult to justify investment in costly subsea cable infrastructure.

The delays could benefit Finnish wave developer AW Energy, which had proposed a small array project in

Portuguese waters for submission to the European Commission’s NER300 support programme.

Officials in Lisbon overlooked AW Energy and threw their weight behind utility EDP’s Windfloat consortium proposal but without a viable deployment site the project could be relocated, leaving Portugal with a spare NER300 slot.

AW Energy has a pre-consented test site at Peniche where a proof of concept WaveRoller device has been undergoing trials since 2012.

The device is being fitted with additional sensors at ENP’s local shipyard ahead of a new round of trials to assess component wear and tear over a four to six-month period.

Engineers will also collect environmental and load data needed for the design of a larger unit that is intended to slash capital costs and boost efficiency.

The first round of “basic design” has been completed and detailed work will be finalised by the year-end.

A power take-off unit will be put through its paces at AW Energy’s new test centre in Jarvenpaa, Finland, which will get up and running later this year.

The next generation Waveroller could be installed at Peniche, or at Fortum and DCNS’ French wave project in Brittany where a 1.5MW array is slated for 2017.

A third undisclosed site is also on the cards.

R&D keeps the candle burning

Enterprise: a prototype of the PROCODAC deep-water turbine

Photo: UPM

Flat-lining Ocean Plug opens way for AW Energy

marine focus22 reNews 8 May 2014

Tocardo going river deep and mountain high

Italian technology finds clear water in France

Report card due for Belgian buoy

www.reNews.biz

Belgian initiative FlanSea expects results this summer

from deployment of a 4.4-metre diameter wave buoy outside of Ostend harbour in July 2013.

The 25-tonne half-scale unit is designed to tap power from low to moderate wave regimes and is due to be followed by a

full-scale second phase. Project partners include Deme Blue Energy, Cloostermans, Electrawinds, Ostend Harbour, Spiromatic, Contec and the University of Ghent.

A total of €2.4m in funding was provided by government innovation agency IWT.

Permitting constraints in southern Italy have

prompted engineers from the University of Naples Federico II to up sticks to France for the next stage of development of a tidal-cum-hydrokinetic concept.

The institution is a shareholder in a new French company called Blue Shark Power System that will build a ‘Gem4’ turbine to be moored close to the Gironde river estuary, possibly as soon as spring 2015.

Construction of the 150kW grid-connected machine could begin in the second half of 2014 with funding from the Aquitaine regional authorities.

Blue Shark also prepared a submission to the French government’s tidal tender at the Raz Blanchard, where strong currents could see a turbine with the same dimensions generate up to 1MW.

Gem4 is a buoyant device that can be winched 15 metres underwater and resurfaced for maintenance. The system is patented in France with two contra-rotating six-metre diameter ducted turbines and a passive yaw system.

The unit will build on a prototype dubbed Ocean Kite

that generated 20kW in 1.5 metre-per-second flows over a few months at a lagoon site in Venice in 2012. The turbine exhibited global electrical efficiency of 70%.

Professor Domenico Coiro of the university’s department of aerospace engineering said he still hopes to access Italy’s €0.34 per kWh feed-in tariff if consenting issues can be overcome.

A planned Gem turbine deployment in the Strait of Messina between Sicily and the mainland has been hobbled by three years of uncertainty from authorities over issuing a ‘first of its kind’ offshore permit, on top of “standard Italian bureaucracy”.

Consent could be in place by year-end, Coiro said, after which “things will move forward very fast because the way to obtain the permit will be much more clear”.

Elsewhere, 40South Energy has delivered first power from its R115 wave converter at the Punta Righini test site off Castiglioncello in Tuscany. The 150kW device is a forerunner to megawatt-scale hardware being developed in partnership with utility customer Enel Green Power.

Dutch tidal turbine specialist Tocardo is aiming to have 12 new medium-scale

machines installed and operating in Dutch and Nepalese waters by year-end.

Permits and finance are in place for a flagship array of five units that will be installed by December in a barrier that spans the mouth of the Oosterschelde estuary.

The array has been boosted to 1.5MW after hardware optimisation increased the rated capacity of the T200 turbine platform. Chief executive Hans van Breugel said new names are needed to reflect the higher output of Tocardo’s T100, T200 and T500 portfolio.

The Oosterschelde facility will be owned and operated by Tocardo on a commercial basis for 20 years, selling power into the grid.

Van Breugel said the project will pay for itself over time thanks to a high capacity factor and low maintenance costs but the “small” Dutch feed-in tariff means the returns are not commercially attractive.

The project is valuable for Tocardo as turbines can be easily accessed from above and tested in flows of at least five metres per second in a “very safe, controlled environment”.Three new T100 units will be added to the Dutch tidal testing centre’s Afsluitdijk sluice by Den Oever to learn about interactions between turbines in arrays.

The longer term plan is to scale up to 30 turbines

generating 30MW. The smaller T100 hardware must be used due to the restrictive physical dimensions of the sluice.

In Nepal, Tocardo is building a floating trimaran barge to accommodate four T100 machines in a river setting near Khurkot with local dealer Glowtech Solutions.

The high marginal cost of power combined with high capacity factor of riverine applications makes the project viable without a feed-in tariff, Van Breugel said.

Tocardo views the UK and Canadian markets as its main opportunity for long-term growth and has expanded its local presence in both countries.

The company’s first genuinely “offshore” deployment is expected off Canada’s eastern or western seaboard in the next two to three years followed by a small array in UK waters thereafter.

Pod-racer: the 20kW Ocean Kite prototypePhoto: University of Naples Federico II Dep. of Aerospace Engineering

Tow test: a T100 is put through its paces Photo: Tocardo

8 May 2014 reNews 23marine focus

www.reNews.biz

Leading Australian technology developer Carnegie Wave Energy is

all set to deploy its Ceto 5 device off Perth and use the project as a launching pad for further innovation.

Offshore foundations and pipelines are in place for a trio of 240kW buoys off Garden Island, Western Australia. Onshore power station, grid connection and desalination plant works are progressing.

Carnegie will undertake “extensive onshore testing” to fault-find before installation, said chief executive Michael Ottaviano. “It is more important that we get it right than we rush it.”

The facility will deliver power and fresh water to the Department of Defence from around mid-2014 and collect data from some 500 sensors that will inform design of the next iteration, Ceto 6.

Ottaviano said the Perth project is “a means to an end” that will help ensure design

work is based on calibrated and validated computational models.

“Given the project isn’t profitable… it would be difficult to justify operating (it) beyond 12 months,” he added.

The company is in a strong financial position after an oversubscribed A$9m share issue and having signed a A$20m

loan facility with the Australian government’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

A major change for Ceto 6, which will be tested as a 3MW array of three buoys at either Garden Island or Wave Hub in England from 2016, is relocation of power generation equipment.

The hardware was until now placed onshore to allow

Carnegie to focus on buoy hydrodynamics but this will soon be integrated aboard the float.

Offshore power take-off opens up deep-water sites farther from shore and enables use of “quick connect” oil and gas technology by removing heavy kit such as pumps and pods from the seafloor.

Reducing distance between power collection and generation also enhances integration of advanced control methodologies, Ottaviano said.

Carnegie said it believes increasing buoy diameter from 11 metres to around 20 metres for Ceto 6 will boost rated capacity from 240kW to 1MW per buoy, significantly improving yield and reducing costs.

This assertion is challenged by some in the wave sector who claim that point absorbers are limited by a theoretical maximum size beyond which increasing dimensions offer diminishing returns. 24

Thought bubble: Carnegie is challenging claimed limits to point absorber wave technologies by expanding its current 240kW buoys (above) to 1MW Photo: Carnegie

Carnegie takes on wave doubters

OpenHydro is a DCNS company specialising iin thedesign, manufacture, installation and mainteenanceof tidal turbines. Our vision is to deploy farmms oftidal turbines under the surface of the oceanns producing cost effective predictable renewabble energy that is silent, invisible and in harmony with the environmeentnt.

OpenHyydrdrooo hahas a project portfofolioosppannnningng tthhee UUSASA, Canadada, FrFranancece,,NoNortheerrn Ireland, ScSc tottlalandnd aand ttheheChChChanannel Islands.

For more infinformormatiationon visvisit:it:

“This is an area that isn’t as well understood

as it might appear (and which) we’ve invested significant effort in understanding over the last five or six years,” said Ottaviano.

Carnegie has developed complex computational models that “show clearly the relationship between buoy diameter and power capacity and are in good agreement with the analytical solutions using well known equations”.

Independent third-party reviews “confirmed our approach is correct and the results valid”.

Ocean Power Technologies is also hoping to scale up its point absorber technology for an array off the coast of Portland, Victoria.

The up to 62.5MW scheme, backed by a A$66.5m Australian government grant, will be built in three phases initially featuring three ‘Mark 3.1’ PowerBuoys with a total peak capacity of 2.5MW.

OPT Australasia general manager Keith Bowyer said surveys and desktop studies completed under stage one are

being reviewed alongside Lockheed Martin and renewables agency ARENA.

The initial development phase also included “previous development and technical demonstrations of the Mark 3 PowerBuoy” and was budgeted at A$42m, funded by ARENA grants and “internal and external financing”.

Bowyer said it would be “premature” to provide a timeframe for deployment at Victoria or share information on development of the larger Mark 4 PowerBuoy proposed for later stages of the project.

marine focus24 reNews 8 May 2014

Oceanlinx under water

Maine player flies flag for US innovation

Flightless Kiwis

www.reNews.biz

Marine technology and project development

activity is grinding to a halt in New Zealand as the last scraps of grant funding are used up.

The largest project, a 200MW array in Kaipara Harbour, remains dormant after being sold to power company Todd Energy. Early-stage R&D projects require ongoing support but the government in Wellington has yet to commit further funds to the sector.

The US marine and hydrokinetic sector remains a well-spread

collection of technologies, deployments and test centres united largely by federal funding designed to foster cost of energy targets of 12 to 15 cents per kilowatt-hour by 2030.

The Department of Energy investment portfolio at the end of last year covered 87 projects and totalled $33.8m with the majority of spending aimed at technology advancement, demonstration, infrastructure tests and instrumentation development.

Maine pioneer Ocean Renewable Power Company, one of many recipients of DoE largesse, is upgrading its TidGen turbine technology through next

year ahead of array deployment in the waters of Cobscook Bay.

The company pulled the initial 150kW unit from the waters off the US East Coast last summer after becoming the country’s first tidal generator to supply power to the grid.

ORPC is evaluating system components and working on design enhancements that will “increase output, improve performance and reduce costs”, according to chief executive Chris Sauer.

Nameplate capacity for the next-generation machine will not be determined until optimisation is concluded, he said.

ORPC plans to install an eventual 5MW array as already permitted and supported through its long-term

23

New South Wales wave outfit Oceanlinx continues to hunt

for investors after an attempt to install its 1MW greenWAVE demonstrator (pictured) failed en route to a South Australian test site.

The device is believed to remain on the seabed in shallow waters outside Adelaide while

capital is raised to fund recovery. The concrete structure was allowed to sink when a flotation system failed during the tow out to sea.

Milestone grant payments were contingent on deployment and the delay caused Oceanlinx to go into administration.

Photo: Oceanlinx

25

Feds bankrolling technology development and deployments, writes Todd Westbrook

Carnegie takes on doubters

First flickers in Latin AmericaInterest is beginning to grow in

Latin America’s considerable marine and river hydrokinetic potential but development activity remains at a very early stage.

Chile has done most in the region to stimulate interest by way of international tenders for government-funded wave and tidal demonstration projects.

International consortia were formed in recent months to draw up joint bids for a competition to help set up an International Centre of Excellence in ocean energy in the Andean country. The submission deadline passed at the end of April.

Santiago earlier offered grants of around $14m towards a megawatt-scale tidal deployment and a smaller wave project that the Inter-American Development Bank would

supplement to the tune of $2.95m.

However, the government is yet to commit to the funds and there is no firm date for the pilot programme. The recent change in administration has only added to delays, industry sources said.

Elsewhere, Scotrenewables is assessing nascent opportunities for off-grid tidal deployments in Chile and riverine applications of its floating turbine technology in Brazil. Early stage talks with utilities and local agencies are said to have progressed well.

In French Guiana, French vertical axis turbine manufacturer Hydroquest is commissioning a 15kW device at a remote river location. A further three modules could bring the installed capacity to 60kW early next year, the company said.

8 May 2014 reNews 25marine focus

www.reNews.biz

24 power purchase agreement with a local

electric utility. At least three machines will likely be deployed in the first instance.

DoE funding of $1.9m is for improving control systems while $3m is being spent to develop and test components of an advanced power take-off system.

ORPC is also developing the RivGen system, which will be installed in the Kvichak River at Igiugig, Alaska, this summer. Tow-testing of a 25kW unit was completed in February in Maine ahead of a two-month deployment on a specially-designed pontoon.

The state is also in line to host a small TidGen project to power the city of False Pass at the start of the Aleutians while a large-scale scheme is being evaluated for Cook Inlet.

A deep-water version of the ORPC technology is also under development. Deployment of a prototype mooring and anchoring system is planned this summer under the existing licence in Cobscook Bay.

Washington public utility SnoPUD will set the high-water mark for US ocean energy deployment in 2016 with installation of a pair of OpenHydro 300kW tidal turbines in Admiralty Inlet north of Seattle.

The company was granted Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approval in March and, pending sign-off from the utility’s board of commissioners, secondary contracts will be firmed up later this year following an open tender.

Onshore works will kick off in 2015 with the Irish-built Open Centre turbines due to go into the water the following year.

Deployment will run for three to five years and, while SnoPUD has no plans for a larger second phase, it said the research will inform industry and help move tidal technology forward.

“The intent is to assess the technical, environmental and economic viability of tidal energy in Puget Sound,” said a spokesman.

Total funding of $13m has already been secured from the DoE, federal appropriations and

the Bonneville Power Administration. Final budgets will be defined once all contracts are lined up.

On the East Coast, long-time developer Verdant Power is carrying out reliability tests on components that will make up its KHPS (Kinetic Hydropower System) Gen5 tidal turbines ahead of certification. Phased

deployment in the East River off Roosevelt Island, New York, is scheduled to start next year. Units will feature five-metre rotors and nameplate capacity of 35kW.

Up to 10 will be installed in 2015 in small batches, with a further 10 due in each of the following two years. Power could be provided to the

adjacent Cornell Tech under a memorandum of understanding signed last summer.

The technology is designed to be scale-able with rotors and generators changing to match resource conditions.

A deal to carry out feasibility studies into possible river deployment in Turkey was signed last month.

The Pacific Marine Energy Center wave test site

proposal is poised to take a step closer to realisation off Newport, Oregon, in the wake of initial public consultation that wrapped up in recent weeks.

Bureau of Ocean Energy Management officials are assessing feedback to a notice of potential research lease and a request for any competitive interest in the site some four nautical miles offshore.

The 10MW facility is being driven by the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center and Oregon State University and will feature four grid-connected berths in waters up to 75 metres deep.

Each of the berths will have a dedicated subsea cable to shore and could host up to five devices with a maximum of 10

across the entire site. If there is no competitive interest PMEC is expected to move quickly into the application stage and environmental assessment, overseen by both BOEM and FERC. Construction is unlikely to kick off before 2015-16 with operations pencilled in no sooner than 2016.

Elsewhere, Florida Atlantic University awaits a formal lease award from BOEM for its Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center test site off Fort Lauderdale, having already completed its environmental assessment and signed off on state permits.

Up to three areas could be used under the terms of the lease with the main site around 13 nautical miles offshore in 300 metres of water, where average currents are one metre per second and at peak up to

2.5m/s. FAU initially plans to provide test and evaluation infrastructure and capability to the wider marine energy industry for short-term deployments measured in hours or days.

As part of that process it will tow-test a 20kW three-bladed ocean current research turbine this year to pave the way for future trials of single components or full systems up to 100kW nameplate capacity.

The university is also in preliminary planning stages for testing full-scale, grid-connected turbines “similar to the European Marine Energy Centre’s arrangement”.

A spokesperson said: “If demand exists and permits are in place we hope to test a commercial turbine moored to the test berth in this calendar year.”

Test centres take shape off both coasts

Mixing it up: ORPC’s RivGen assembly during tow-testing in Maine this year and (inset) removal of the TidGen turbine from Cobscook Bay Photos: ORPC

marine focus26 reNews 8 May 2014

Asian runnersroll up sleevesTechnology big-hitters refine hardware on offer as Japan starts selection process for test centres, writes Seb Kennedy

www.reNews.biz

Prototype: Columbia’s SeaRay Photo: CPT

Atlantis Resources is strengthening ties in China

for local manufacturing of tidal turbines and development of commercial arrays.

Dongfang Electric Machinery Company is being lined up to build AR1500 turbines for local and international markets, including a possible 30MW array in Zhejiang province backed by China Three Gorges Corporation.

Atlantis is looking to take advantage of Dongfang’s status as preferred supplier to CTGC that could potentially lead to an initial five AR1500s order for supply in 2016.

In the meantime, Dongfang will refurbish the AR1000 turbine tested by Atlantis in Orkney prior to redeployment at a site near Zhoushan in Zhejiang province this year.

The demonstration project

with state-owned China Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection is expected to be the first megawatt-scale tidal stream turbine deployed in China and is the “main focus of Atlantis’s activity” in the country.

Successful trials could lead to establishment of a joint venture vehicle for further co-operation in exploiting China’s estimated 14GW of technically extractable tidal capacity.

In India, Atlantis is progressing development work for an up to 250MW tidal array in the Gulf of Kutch, Gujarat. An initial deployment of five turbines is earmarked for 2016 pending permits and a viable feed-in tariff.

Elsewhere, Atlantis is said to be developing a pipeline of projects in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia.

Wave and tidal innovation has gained momentum in parts of the Far East in recent years despite technical delays at some flagship projects.

Japanese industrial heavyweight Kawasaki Heavy Industries is looking at postponing deployment of a 1MW subsea tidal turbine in Orkney to allow engineers more time to work on the system.

KHI is “currently considering a change of its development schedule in order to conduct redesign work for cost reduction”, a spokesperson said.

Exactly how it hopes to achieve savings or by how long it expects to miss its 2015 target deployment at the European Marine Energy Centre remains to be seen.

The work is expected to build on a front-end engineering design study for turbine

installation, maintenance and decommissioning completed by James Fisher Marine Services and Mojo Maritime earlier this year.

The Japanese government is meanwhile considering submissions from a number of prefectures to establish test centres for different types of ocean energy technologies.

Officials are taking cues from facilities in western Europe, particularly EMEC. They have also identified at least two tidal straits in the Goto Islands where Kawasaki’s turbines could be deployed.

In Korea, completion of a 500kW oscillating water column pilot plant at Yongsoo off Jeju island has hit a minor delay, according to the International Energy Agency’s annual Ocean Energy Systems report.

The concrete caisson 27

Columbia quarter-backing for Stingray demo in 2015Virginia wave device

developer Columbia Power Technologies is approaching the endgame with detailed design of its 500kW-plus Stingray device.

Chief executive Reenst Lesemann said DNV GL is leading the charge on certification of the unit in a process due to wrap up in the first half of next year.

Parallel trials of the power take-off system are taking place on a test rig at the US National Wind Technology Center in Colorado until the second quarter of next year.

Siemens is supplying direct drive generators for the device with a single-point mooring system provided by Intermoor and engineering from Ershigs and Northern Power Systems.

Columbia is looking to deploy a demonstration unit in the second half of 2015. Sites in a number of markets are being considered. DoE has most recently funded hull optimisation of Stingray.

Federal cash has also been pledged to Dresser-Rand’s development of power take-off

systems for oscillating water columns and for wave devices to deploy at the US Navy’s test site off Hawaii.

A $10m pot was unveiled in March to fund a wave energy competition and resource characterisation instrumentation.

Not all DoE-funded projects have borne fruit. Antipodean outfit WET-NZ was due to deploy 20kW wave devices in Hawaii and in its home market of New Zealand last year.

However, part-owner Power Projects is no longer involved in the company and partner Callaghan Innovation, a NZ government agency, could offer no information on current status.

The last known position of the two WET-NZ devices was in storage: one in Oregon following deployment off the state in 2012 and the other in Wellington where it is stalled awaiting spare parts.

Wave power developer OPT, meanwhile, cancelled a single PowerBuoy project and subsequent 10-unit array off Oregon as a result of what the company described as rising costs and finance difficulties.

Atlantis manufacturing linkopens Chinese order book

that will house two 250kW air turbines was

towed to site in 2012 but will not be grid connected until the latter half of 2014.

Large industrials and research centres with government backing are planning further deployments of home-grown technologies in South Korea in the medium term.

Hyundai Heavy Industries is aiming to trial a 1MW tidal turbine at Jangjuk this year.

Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology is building a 300kW pendulum wave energy converter for trials at Jeju in 2015 and a 300kW “active control tidal turbine” at Uldolmok in 2016.

Korea East-West Power Company continues to operate and optimise output from a pair of 500kW helical tidal turbines at Uldolmok.

Western technology companies are also looking to

penetrate Asian markets. Dutch player Tocardo has built the first turbine under a sales contract with an undisclosed partner in Japan. The project will move forward once a local feed-in tariff has been confirmed.

Tocardo is also closing out a similar deal in Korea, where deployment is earmarked for the first quarter of 2015. Both agreements were brokered by Tocardo’s Japanese agent SPD.

8 May 2014 reNews 27marine focusChina taste-testingtechnology allsorts

26

China is forging ahead with development of array projects to accommodate

home-grown wave and tidal technologies, according to the IEA Ocean Energy Systems annual report.

Research institutions are progressing a variety of concepts, some of which bear a passing resemblance to prototypes tested in the UK and western Europe.

The National Ocean Technology Center deployed a 100kW seabed mounted hinged wave converter off Daguan Island in Shandong province last summer.

The hydraulic device was “destroyed by a typhoon” and the institute is now collaborating with Tsingtao Haina Company to develop a 50kW “optimised converter”.

Harbin Engineering University has run trials on a series of vertical axis tidal turbines mounted on catamaran-type structures. The third iteration featuring two 300kW turbines with six-metre diameter

Chinese pearl: China’s 100kW seabed mounted hinged wave converter Photo: National Ocean Technology Center

re News

© All articles appearing in reNews are protected by copyright. Any unauthorised reproduction is strictly prohibited.

www.reNews.biz

ISSN 1478-307X

Publisher Renews Limited, First Floor, St George’s House, St George’s Street, Winchester, Hampshire, SO23 8BG, UK.

reNews costs £430 + VAT for a 12-month subscription. A Multiple User Subscription (10 users) costs £1460 + VAT; a Corporate Subscription (unlimited) costs £2515 + VAT.

Editor Todd Westbrook +44 (0)1479 873 167 todd@reNews.bizDeputy editor Seb Kennedy +44 (0)208 981 8151 seb@reNews.bizUK offshore Martin Halfpenny +44 (0)1962 890 479 martin@reNews.bizGermany offshore Dan Rigden +44 (0)1962 890 449 dan@reNews.bizFrance offshore Lisa Louis +33 627 933 453 lisa@reNews.bizNorth America offshore Patti Lane +1 416 481 9795 pattilane@rogers.comSolar Sian Crampsie +44 (0)7711 007277 sian@reNews.bizProduction Richard Crockett, Phil Dixon production@reNews.biz

Sales manager Cassi Davison +44 (0)1962 890 440 cassi@reNews.bizSales executive Vicky Mant +44 (0)1962 890 468 vicky@reNews.bizSales executive Tom Allerston +44 (0)1962 849 302 tom@reNews.biz

Coming next in our series of in-depth

market reports:

IRELANDTo advertise contact:

sales@reNews.biz

Asian runners roll up their sleeves

turbines was tested in Daishan, Zhejiang province.

The Ocean University of China has built a pair of 50kW horizontal axis tidal turbines on

triangular gravity bases for trials off Zhaitang Island, also in Shandong.

The university has in addition completed a pre-feasibility

study for a 30MW tidal power station at Bachimen, and economic feasibility analysis of a 40MW estuarine tidal array in Rushan. The latter came in at around $8000 per kilowatt installed.

Datang Fujian Power Generation Company carried out site selection and “engineering pre-selection” on a 24MW tidal installation in Maluan Bay last year.

China is also moving ahead with site selection studies at planned marine renewables test centres in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province and Wanshan, Guangdong province. A 1MW tidal facility and a 300kW wave site will each feature six demonstration berths and three test berths.