EMEC wins award

Now recovered from the Scottish Renewables Green Energy Awards dinner on Thursday, at which I'm delighted to report EMEC won an award!

AquaBuoy prototype sinks - allegedly

It seems that the 2MW trial Aquabuoy prototype off the Oregon coast has met a watery end.

The news is here.

It's not really clear what this means right now, but this strongly suggests that OPD's approach of taking inordinate care with the prototype device may prove to be the right one.

Finavera, Aquabuoy's owner, has yet to update its website, but the MD is quoted as saying that the device was only engineered to survive 3 months: it survived for only two, and surely wasn't intended to sink without trace at the end of the period?

On the encouraging side, Finavera is telling the world that the prototype delivered what the company hoped.

The Councils

For a while now, I've been a Council Member. The Councils are organisations of experts organised by the Gerson Lehrman Group, which offer expert consultations on a wide range of matters to interested parties (often investment banks or other financial institutions).

Gerson Lehrman has just produced the above graphic, which I've now incorporated into my blogspot profile too. If you'd be interested to have a specific discussion on the issues raised in this blog, or on other renewables topics, please click on it to make contact via Gerson Lehrman.

Pretty soon....

you'll be able to walk across the Bay of Fundy, leaping from tidal device to tidal device, without touching the water.

The map (thanks Google) shows where the Bay of Fundy lies, on the eastern seaboard of North America.

Now Marine Current Turbines has announced an agreement with the Maritime Tidal Energy Consortium to develop a project in the Bay of Fundy. It joins Open Hydro, and Ocean Renewable Power in planning projects in this area, which benefits from the highest tidal ranges in the world. There are also some suggestions out there on the internet that a tidal barrage might be an option.

The question in my mind is whether there are areas with attractive stream speeds too, but this entry on the Bay of Fundy blog clearly recognises that sites are available.

Mackie's - Sustainable ice cream

Mackie's Ice Cream - a proud Scottish company - now has a little logo on each and every pot of its ice cream showing that it is made with renewably generated electricity from these turbines.

Lots more details here...
Nice one Mackies.