Pelamis goes live in Portugal

After what can fairly be described as an extended commissioning period, Pelamis announced today that the Portuguese project comprising 3 750 kW devices has been officially inaugurated by the Portuguese Economy Minister.

There's some interesting stuff in the press release. The project has an installed capacity of 2.25 MW and cost €9 million: put another way, that's £3.16 million/MW. Compared with recently published figures for Greater Gabbard offshore windfarm, which estimate capital costs at around £2.8 million/MW, this suggests that wave is almost competitive with offshore wind already. And wave gets 2 ROCs/MWh in the UK (maybe 5 in Scotland), against 1.5 ROCS/MWhr for offshore wind.

So unless there's a load of hidden cost in the Portuguese project, this is really encouraging for wave power.

"have been deployed"?

The Economist this week has a section on wave energy technology, and intriguingly refers to Pelamis as follows:

"Three such devices...have been deployed (my italics) off the coast of Portugal.

Now, the Economist is usually pretty reliable on its fact checking, but the Pelamis Wave Power website makes no reference to a successful installation. I wonder who's right...has the Economist got ahead of itself, or is PWP being unexpectedly modest?

OPT joins the multi-MW club

Ocean Power Technology has just announced a 10 MW wave energy project in Australia with potential for expansion up to 100 MW later.

It joins the exclusive club of wave energy developers with multi MW projects at some stage in development. Others which come to mind are Pelamis Wave Power with 2.25 MW in Portugal and Scotland, with expansion options, the WaveHub - comprising a few MW from each of Pelamis, OPT, Oceanlinx and Fred Olsen - and Finavera which has a couple of projects in the Pacific NorthWest.

Some other developers might claim to be near to joining the club (WaveDragon, Archimedes WaveSwing), but they're some way off yet (unless I've missed some!)