Floating wind turbine - -near to installation

Some while ago, I remember being rather dismissive of a floating wind turbine concept being proposed for the Minch. StatoilHydro has been approaching the problem with a rather more elegant approach, and is now close to installing the prototype 2.3 MW Hywind turbine offshore Norway. Details here.

The turbine is going into a water depth of 220 m, so the water depth is roughly twice the hub height. This may well be a solution to Norway's offshore wind needs, as the country isn't blessed with much shallow water shelf, but I'm struggling to think of suitable locations on the UKCS.

We haven't been able to find any cost information for the project though - it would be interesting to see how it stacks up against "conventional" offshore wind.

Whatever happens, we'll keep an interested eye on how the 2 year testing programme evolves.

42 bids!

The Crown Estate has announced that it has received 42 bids from 20 organisations for Pentland Firth leases.  Apparently lease applications for sites from 10 MW to 300 MW have been received, across a range of technologies and technology types (wave and tidal), and from small developers all the way up to large multi-national energy companies (I wonder if they mean oil companies, utilities or both?)

It seems to us that there is some risk here that bidders may be tempted to "land-bank", tying up sites without serious near-term development plans.  I hope the Crown Estate is sensible enough to try to make sure that only really credible companies are awarded leases in the most energetic areas.  We worry that putting today's devices into the Pentland Firth is like racing a Model T Ford around Brands Hatch - pushing early stage technology too far.

So while we're pleased at the level of interest, we hope that lessees are conservative in rolling out their technologies to less energetic sites first.

Sunday Herald story on wind resource

Couldn't resist the opportunity to link to http://www.sundayherald.com/mostpopular.var.2509982.mostviewed.blown_away_by_the_north_sea.php">this story from the Sunday Herald this week.  The gist is that Atmos Consulting has access to NASA wind data, which they appear to have processed to review the wind resource and potential energy capture from sites for Third Round offshore windfarms.

I was called up to comment on the analysis, and inevitably the quote is rather simpler than the half hour conversation I had with the journo.

Picking winners...

Redfield Consulting has just published its new review of the marine energy sector, rating 120 wave and tidal devices on dimensions of technical and commercial feasibility.  We've developed an objective scoring system, which hopefully takes woolly judgement out of the equation.

Technical feasibility: "can the device work?"

Our technical feasibility scores are determined by clear concept definition for the device, lab and tank testing, and ideally prototyping at large scale in the sea.

Commercial feasibility: "can the device operate and make money?"

Our scoring system on commercial feasibility tries to score whether the device has addressed the key questions of survivability, reliability and accessibility, as well whether the device developer has accessed third party investment, the breadth of management team and obviously whether commercial projects are under way or planned.

We're interested in your views on the scoring system and on how further discrimination can be introduced as more and more devices start full scale deployment.

We had lots of interesting feedback at the All-Energy Show, not least an impassioned plea for inclusion of a points score for greater swept area for tidal stream devices.  We'd love to hear what you, the device developer and investment community think about development of the scoring system.

The report is available now: please feel free to contact us at Redfield Consulting (inforedfieldconsulting.co.uk, and we can let you have more information.  And we plan to keep it up to date, introducing a time dimension so we can all see which devices are evolving fastest.

And the winners at the moment?...you'll have to get the report to find that out!

All-Energy triumph

Another triumphant All-Emergy conference comes to an end. Very busy and very businesslike. All in all excellent. Get it in your diary for next year!


Apologies for brevity - posted from my iPhone