Aquamarine gets (really) serious

Aquamarine has just announced the appointment of a new CEO, Martin McAdam, who was last seen at Airtricity where he was Chief Operating Officer. Details here.

This is interesting, as Martin's clearly a serious player in the renewables space. Now, I think it's fair to say that some of the marine developers are thinly capitalised (putting it politely) and might struggle to attract a candidate of this calibre. So we take this appointment as very positive for Aquamarine, as we (perhaps rashly) infer a real commitment from Scottish and Southern to the success of the business, which might well take more investment than the £6.5 million it's put in so far.

An alternative interpretation would be that perhaps Mr. McAdam made such a huge pile of cash out of the Airtricity sale that he doesn't have to worry about money!

Cheeky Wavegen aiming for the Saltire Prize?

In a press release in late July (here), Wavegen announced the "official start" of a 100 kW turbine at the Islay LIMPET site.

The odd thing is that the LIMPET has been operational since 2000, with turbines of more than 100 kW installed in the past. It's not clear to us how this is really news, although there is some limited discussion of "new breakwater turbines" being tested. Is this just Wavegen seeking to position itself as a contender for the Saltire Prize?

It's all go in Strangford Lough

Oceanflow Energy has just deployed a 1:10 scale "Evopod" device in Strangford Narrows, presumably a hop and skip away from MCT's SeaGen device. The Evopod is a semi-submersible, moored energy converter which floats and yaws to optimise turbine alignment with tidal flow.

This company's been below the radar a bit, but seems to be making good technical progress. It's leading light is Graham Mackie, last seen as Technical Director at Wavegen, and founder of renewable energy consultancy Overberg (which has now morphed into Oceanflow.

Looking at Oceanflow's website, it appears that the plan is to develop a 1.5 MW evopod design.

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!

Don't let the windfarm spoil the view!

Just back from a trip to the Mull of Kintyre. No sign of mist rolling in from the sea, but also it's hard to accuse the windfarms on the Mull (there are at least 3 - I couldn't find two) spoiling the view.

More posts later on the trip.