Redfield Tidal Report

Redfield Consulting is pleased to announce that its updated Tidal Energy Report is now available.  Covering more than 150 tidal energy devices, and reviewing the top 20 in more detail, the report provides an authoritiative and objective overview of the current state of the tidal stream energy sector.

For device developers, it provides a review of the competitive landscape; for potential investors, it permits identification and high-grading of potential investment opportunities.

It is available as a pdf for £295+VAT, or in hardcopy for £350+VAT.  More details are available in the flyer available at http:www.redfieldconsulting.co.uk/Redfield Tidal Report flyer.pdf

If you’d like to order, would like further information or have any questions, please contact Redfield Consulting, at reports@redfieldconsulting.co.uk

Tidal devices - performance review

Following the Scottish Renewables Marine Energy conference in Inverness, a couple of interesting performance metrics emerged.

Atlantis recently announced that the MeyGen project had generated 700 MWhr during August, apparently from 2 AndritzHydroHammerfest (AHH) turbines.  We thought it might be interesting to extract an average capacity factor from these figures.

2 turbines at 1.5 MW - 3 MW installed capacity.

Number of hours in August: 31 * 24 = 744

Total potential output = 744 hours * 3 MW = 2.232 GWhr

Actual output: 700 MWhr

Capacity factor: 0.7/2.232 = 31.4%

This may be a slight over-estimate, as the third AHH turbine may have made a minor contribution late in the month following its re-installation, but even with that proviso, these are not bad figures for a full month (i.e. neaps and springs).

ScotRenewables made a similar claim - that its 2.0 MW SR2000 had generated 116 MWh over week.  This equates to a capacity factor of 116/(24*2*7) = 34.5%, and we understand that this period was intermediate between spring and neap tide.

As runtimes extend and reliability improves, we hope to see these numbers go up too.

More interesting marine recruitment

Interesting to see that Atlantis Resources is beefing up its management team too, with the hiring of Jim Forbes as Chairman of the UK business.

Details here.

So just like Aquamarine, there's a real strengthening of management teams going on in the space right now, and a real commercial focus on the new hires.

MCT power curve - analysis

MCT has just published a power curve for its Seagen device in Strangford Narrows (see figure above and link here). The curve shows a period of output at the design capacity of 1.2 MW, in what is described as a “medium tide”. This tide appears to have peaked at 3.1 m/s, which may be medium for Strangford, but is pretty impressive for most sites.

We realised that it’s possible to drill into this curve to come up with some (very) theoretical ideas of the capacity factor which might be achieved by the technology. First we constructed a velocity lookup table by taking a ruler to the graph, which shows the power output (kW) at various stream speeds (m/s).

m/s - Power
0 - 0
1 - 20
1.25 - 100
1.5 - 180
1.75 - 400
2 - 600
2.25 - 900
2.4 - 1200

We then constructed a model which characterises a simplified tidal environment, with stream speed varying according to a diurnal cycle (sinusoidal variation over 24 hours, in 2 flood, 2 ebb tides) and a 28 day lunar cycle (again simple sinusoidal variation).

We entered a maximum stream speed (peak rate achieved at spring tide) and a minimum stream speed (peak rate achieved at neap tide) and constructed a lookup on an hour by hour basis to estimate the power output over a month.

Based on a maximum stream speed of 3.2 m/s and a minimum stream speed of 1.6 m/s (ie neap maximum is half as fast as spring maximum), we find that the average theoretical power output (assuming no outages) to be 450 kW, making the capacity factor 38%.

The model shows that output is sensitive to both maximum stream speed and the ratio between spring and neap peak rates. The table below shows the relationship between capacity factor and the maximum stream speed) assuming that neaps are limited to 50% of the maximum stream speed in springs. The month-average capacity factor for various maximum spring stream speeds is:

m/s - CF (%)
2.8 - 28%
3 - 34%
3.2 - 38%
3.5 - 45%
4 - 53%
The table below shows how the capacity factor is influenced by the ratio between the maximum neap speed and the maximum spring speed based on a maximum spring stream speed of 3.2 m/s. The table shows maximum neap speed and month-average capacity factor.

m/s - CF (%)
0.8 - 31%
1.2 - 33%
1.6 - 38%
2.1 - 45%
2.4 - 48%

All of these power output estimates are wildly theoretical – and should be treated with extreme caution. Next we’re going to combine this power curve with some actual tidal data from tidal diamonds on charts to see how that looks.

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.

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!

Thirty Eight!

The Crown Estate has just announced that 38 companies and consortia have been invited to tender for leases in the Pentland Firth lease round.

Obviously there's no public information on who the 38 are, but it would be interesting to know.

236 pages!

The Department of Energy and Climate Change has published its Consultation Document on the Severn Tidal Barrage. We've all got until 23rd April to wade through the 236 page document and make our responses to DECC.

The schemes reviewed include barrages and lagoons, and the consultation is here.

There's been some recent press coverage on a possible Solway barrage, details here.

 So, barrages clearly flavour of the month.

The Saltire Prize

The Scottish Government made an announcement on the Saltire Prize yesterday evening. Although some opponents point out that this is twelfth time this has been announced, this announcement adds some new specifics - most notably the target of 100 GWh over two years from wave or tidal devices in Scottish waters.


The text is here:

Purpose
The purpose of the Scottish Government’s £10 million Saltire Prize is to stimulate innovation across the world that will lead to delivery of the best wave and tidal energy technology.

Challenge
The Saltire Prize will be awarded to the team that can demonstrate in Scottish waters a commercially viable wave or tidal energy technology that achieves a minimum electrical output of 100GWh over a continuous 2 year period using only the power of the sea and is judged to be the best overall technology after consideration of cost, environmental sustainability and safety.

Outline of the Challenge
The Prize will be open to any individual, team or organisation from across the world who believes they have wave or tidal technology capable of fulfilling the Challenge.

Competitors will be challenged to deploy a device (or array of devices) in Scottish waters which uses wave and tidal technologies to generate over 100GWh of electricity in any 2 consecutive year period. Having reached this output threshold, competitors will be judged on the cost, environmental sustainability and safety of their projects.

Next Steps
The Saltire Prize is now open for initial registration. To register interest in the Saltire Prize, the registration form can be found at www.saltireprize.com

Registering interest in the Saltire Prize will ensure that you receive a copy of the Consultation paper on the Saltire Prize guidelines in January 2009. As part of our design process, the Scottish Government is keen to seek comments on the draft Saltire Prize guidelines in advance of publication. Following consideration of the comments received, the finalised guidelines will be published by 30 June 2009 and registration of interest will also ensure you receive a copy of the full application pack and guidelines at this time.

Speaking for Redfield, we'll be registering an interest, specifically to see the consultation paper in January. We have previously suggested a prize of this kind, although our initial reaction is that 100 GWh is maybe 5 times too high as a target...it would imply around 25 MW of installed capacity running at a capacity factor of 25% for the full two years - we think 10 MW running for a year would do the trick.

Present power prices and multiple ROCs (which make a MWh of marine power worth maybe £200) mean that the winning project would have received £20 million in revenue. In the context of such a project, the value of the prize is relatively small, but experience with the X-Prize (and other similar prizes) was that a chunky cash prize triggered development work worth a multiple of the prize fund, and that's clearly what aimed for here.

For reasons too complex to go into here, Redfield feels rather proprietorial about the Saltire Prize, so we're very pleased to see this announcement firming up the prize terms. We'd be keen that the subjective bit about "consideration of cost, environmental sustainability and safety." should be downplayed, or addressed very early so there's no question when a project crosses the 100 GWh finish line.

Nothing new under the sun (or waves)

Interesting article in the Guardian today about a horizontal axis transverse tidal turbine: a cylindrical rotor is placed across the tidal stream, and rotates in the tidal stream. I've borrowed the Guardian's illustration here, and their article is here.

The article quotes all sorts of Dons claiming fantastic unit generation costs (£1.7 million/MW installed - better than offshore wind), and a typical THAWT (Transverse Horizontal Axis Water Turbine) comprising two units with a total capacity of 12 MW.

Apparently the technology has been tank tested, and plans are afoot for a half scale device to be sea-tested in 2009 but there's not a peep about where the money will come from.

And why have entitled this blog entry as I have? Because we know of at least one other horizontal transverse axis device out there, among the more than 60 companies we follow on the main Redfield website.

MCT exports power to the Grid

MCT has now joined the exclusive club of marine renewables developers who have exported power to the Grid. See their press release here.

The exciting and different thing about MCT's news, relative to earlier announcements from OpenHydro, WaveGen's Limpet, Ponte de Archimedes and a few others, is that the Sea Gen is a commercially sized device, with 1.2 MW installed capacity. Its competitors at this stage are in the hundreds of kW range, so this is a different level of achievement.

Well done MCT!

River power - time for some sums

Just back from Budapest, where the Danube transects the city in a stately curve. It seems to run at a reasonable walking pace (this in June - faster in March/April, I'll bet), and must contain a fair slug of energy available for capture. Of course, this is exactly what Verdant are doing in New York at the moment.

The difference here is that Budapest has lots of lovely bridges, which could potentially act as foundations for tidal turbines (as Southampton University demonstrated at a small scale on Yarmouth Pier).

What the world needs now is some calculations on the possible power available from the Danube in Budapest. And once you've covered the Danube, there's the Rhine, the Rhone, the Volga, the Thames....

Verdant Power - virtual tour of the RITE project

It's not every day that the Pope has any impact on the marine renewables industry. But he did yesterday, as the security arrangements for his talk to the United Nations in New York made it logistically difficult for the delegates at the Global Marine Renewable Energy Conference to get from the conference hotel (Broadway and 44th St) to Roosevelt Island (aerial tram from 59th Street and 2nd Avenue).

So Verdant brought a virtual tour of the facility to the hotel, and very impressive it was too.

For me, the key points were

• Verdant has generated nearly 50 MWh over 7,000 turbine-hours


• The technology is on version 5 - this isn't an easy or quick process


• The units are currently rated at 35 kW, and achieve a capacity factor in a tidal setting of c. 30%, but maybe 70%in run-of-river


• Verdant was extremely coy about costings


• Verdant has spent "as much" on environmental studies (lots of money on fish monitoring) as on the technology

I'm very impressed with the step-wise Verdant approach (reminiscent of the Pelamis staged development approach) and by the progress achieved.

Global Marine Renewable Energy Conference - New York, April 2008 - an investigation of wave energy and tidal energy

The Global Marine Renewable Energy Conference finished yesterday with a tour de force by Verdant Power. More of that later, but first my reactions to the main agenda. I've summarised the highpoint of each session here

Session 1: George Hagerman, Virginia Tech: Resource potential and technology status - excellent and knowledgeable overview of technology

Session 2: Keynote addresses. For me, the best was Matt Simmons. Matt is author of "Twilight in the Desert" and founder of Simmons & Co. International, an oil-oriented investment banking firm. I first met Matt a few years ago, when I talked to him about a large UK offshore windfarm project. From memory, he was deeply sceptical then, but his thesis is now that oil production is soon to rapidly decline, and to avoid massive social dislocation and wars over limited resources, it's essential we now pursue alternative energy sources. It's a compelling thesis and convincingly presented. Matt's putting money where his mouth is, by supporting the new Ocean Energy Institute (to be built in Maine).

Sessions 3 and 4: Lots of worthy technical commentary and review of support mechanisms, from which nothing in particular lodged in the memory. Nice to see the UK well represented though.

Session 5: the main event - developers talking about financing their technologies. An interesting range of experiences and firms at different stages in the process. There was still some evidence of the wishlist - more complaining about the difficulties of getting across the "valley of death" than constructive suggestions on how to do it, though. Although, I suppose if you've got a great idea for closing the deal, you're going to want to keep it to yourself.

And that was day one. Unless you count the Canadian reception (and not a Labatt's in sight) and rumours of a bash at the Irish Embassy.

Day 2 opened with Congressman Jay Inslee, who put forward a very positive legislative agenda, which he promises he's working night and day to get through the House. These include a feed in tariff and a renewables obligation- which the conference participants rated the most important stimuli for the rollout of marine renewables.

Session 1 was a chance for EMEC and WaveHub to talk about their regulatory experiences, and for FERC and the MMS to talk about how consenting might work in the US.

Session 2 went through some of the environmental issues facing the Portuguese wave centre, and some other environmental matters. Bit of a chance for the academics to lobby for the "research feast" warned of by Neil Kermode of EMEC in the previous session.

Finally: closing remarks by Senator (R-AK) Lisa Murkowski. Unable to resist a certain partisan finger-pointing, but (unsurprisingly for a representative from Alaska), the Senator was pretty positive on marine renewables. Apparently, Alaska has more coastline than the rest of the US out together!

The final keynote was from NTSERDA's CEO, who's spending $2.5 million on R&D in the New York area (substantially on Verdent, I suspect), compared with a national total of $13 million from federal funds over the next two years.

In summary, as always with conferences the real value came from the talking to new people over the water cooler (or donut stand). I was very impressed that about 300 people made the trip to New York from all over the world, but also that many were from the US (where I hadn't thought so much was going on in marine renewables). The demographic split showed the largest groups were developers and academics - so the industry still needs to be attracting more investors, bankers and (probably) lawyers.

Off to New York

So it's off to New York for the ambitiously-named "Global Marine Renewable Energy Conference."

I'm particularly keen to hear about developers, including

• Ron Smith, Verdant Power, United States


• George Taylor, Ocean Power Technologies, United States


• John Cooper, Ocean Renewable Power Company, United States


• Des McGinnes, Pelamis Wave Power, Scotland


• Andrew Parish, Wavebob Ltd., Ireland


• Martin T I Wright, Marine Current Turbines Limited, Scotland

and also about financing and revenue support in the US and Canada.

It's an early start: 0720 on Thursday, so I'm glad I'm flying west to attend the conference!

I'll be sure to report back as the conference progresses...

Pulse Generation - pulls the rabbit out of the hat

John Hutton, the BERR Minister today announced that it has granted planning permission for a £2 million 150 kW (yes, kW) device in the Humber.

This project has been in the offing for a couple of years. The Pulse Generation website talks about hoping to install a prototype in 2007, and the magical £878,000 BERR grant is mentioned even then. Clearly getting through the planning process has taken longer than Pulse had hoped.

On the upside, the technology is a novel reciprocating hydrofoil device (imagine two of the Engineering Business's Stingrays back to back) but with the generator above the waterline. The site looks interesting too, with a sheltered wave climate and probably quite nicely bi-directional flow.

So the population of devices in the water looks like it's getting larger again.

Islay community steps up for tidal

According to report in the Guardian (not dated 1st April, before you ask), the good folks of Islay are planning to install commercial scale tidal power (to go with the LIMPET wave device).

A look at the consultation document (on the Islay Energy Trust website) shows that the first £750,000 will be spent over the next three years as follows:

• Phase 1 Consultation


• Phase 2 Pre-feasibility


• Phase 3 Feasibility


• Phase 4 Consents

Impressively, the document includes a list as long as your arm of people who the Islay Energy Trust hopes might be convinced to pay for various elements of this work. This document goes on to say that the installed cost of the turbines will be £1.4 million/MW - £3 million/MW and aiming for a target electricity cost of 8.5p/kWh.

These figures would certainly offer a commercial return, but I don't think anyone could achieve these costs yet. So the project is relying on the technology advancing to meet the island's need, and there are plenty of companies seeking to develop their concepts to this point.

The document says that no choices have been made as to the technology to be deployed, so it would seem that the door is open for all developers!

Verdant Power - pluses and minuses

In an earlier post, I promised to write more about my recent visit to Verdant Power...but first, don't let the picture fool you - there's a 19 hour non-slack period in this stretch of water, running at up to 3 m/s.

On the plus side:

• Verdant's got kit in the water (at least I think it was in the water, the East River's a bit murky)


• Verdant has made real progress with the technology, through umpteen refinements


• It's got further development plans, both in the East River and elsewhere


• The design is simple, with relatively few things to go wrong, and may be scalable


• The site is fantastic, with well-behaved bi-directional flow at up to 3 m/s, within a 4-iron of the United Nations building (well, one of Tiger Woods' 4-irons), and better still a short taxi ride from Wall Street


• The company's already raised some significant finance (exploiting that taxi ride from Wall St)

On the "still to do" side:

• Installation is still difficult and expensive


• Labour costs in New York are high


• Reliability is still unproven, despite time in the water (due in part to the fast technology iterations)
  
• Revenue support mechanisms in the US are not as clear as in the UK

On balance, I was very impressed with the company's progress, technology and concept. There's still a fair way to go, but it seems to me that there could well be commercial applications for the technology, particularly in more accessible run-of-river style applications.

In summary, nice one Verdant!

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.

Meanwhile, in the US...

From this unprepossessing container, Verdant Power is running a 6 turbine, 200 kW installation of tidal turbines in the East River of New York.

Verdant has had devices in the water since 2006, and is now on the fourth iteration of its technology.

A simple-looking self-yawing downstream three bladed turbine (see second picture)

operates in this fast flowing branch of the East River (peak stream speed up to 3.1 m/s. I'll be writing more about this interesting technology when I'm back in the office on Monday.

Have a great weekend!