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!

Saltire prize - £10 million (got your attention now?)

Alex Salmond has announced the Saltire Prize - a £10 million prize for advances in clean energy.

Remember the Ansari X-Prize - the privately sponsored prize for the first people to put a craft into space twice within two weeks? Or the Orteig prize, which pushed Lindbergh to fly the Atlantic? Well, the Saltire Prize is intended to trigger and stimulate the same kind of step change in renewables. Obviously Alex Salmond wants the prize to nucleate industries in Scotland, where the wave and tidal (and wind) resources are exceptional.

To my way of thinking, the success of these earlier prizes was driven by the clear and unambiguous targets (getting into space, flying the Atlantic). It's not clear yet, from Alex's speech at least, what the criteria for winning the prize will be. There's a waffley bit in the press release:

The key elements of the Saltire Prize are:

• capturing imaginations: challenge that can inspire a revolution in green energy


• global challenge: high profile prize open to teams from across the world


• relevant to Scotland: relevant to area in which Scotland has strong natural resource and can be demonstrated in Scotland


• capitalises on Scotland's expertise: challenge will reflect area in which Scotland has strong technical expertise and people already working


• achievable in the short-medium term: challenge ideally achievable within a 2-5 year timeframe

I hope the criteria are clearer when they get defined, as this prize won't pull in the effort and investment unless people know what it takes to win.  I love the idea though (mainly because it's an idea I've had myself, but Redfield Consulting doesn't have the budget that Alex has), so let's hope it really gets things moving in the sector.

Marine renewables devices

Over the last few weeks, I've had the opportunity to look at three different (distinctly different) marine renewables devices, and the thing that's really impressed me is how much more credible they are than similar devices were only two years ago.

The amount and quality of engineering thinking, simplification and improvement is striking.

The EMEC Board took a trip out to Eday, to inspect the tidal site and the OpenHydro turbine (photo above) this week, and it was really exciting to see this impressive piece of kit in the Eday tidal stream. It wasn't even one of the three I've mentioned above!