Revisiting the Marine Current Turbines capacity factor

Some while ago, in this blog post we calculated an apparent capacity factor for Marine Current Turbine's SeaGen in Strangford Narrows of 38%.

We've been rooting around in OFGEM's ROC database to see if there's further information available on SeaGen's performance.

Looking at the ROC register, which reports the number of MWh generated for ROC-accredited projects, it seems that the SeaGen achieved monthly average capacity factors of up to 58% in its best years.

This analysis is based on SeaGen having a capacity of 1.2 MW and is consistent with another blog analysis we did of the capacity factor of the technology.



This analysis begs some other questions though - what went wrong in 2011?  and has the technology been abandoned since 2014? It also seems that the capacity factor was pretty variable, pointing to a lack of reliability - fair enough in a prototype technology.

We'll be using this approach  to look at other technologies too, in the upcoming Redfield review of tidal technologies and its companion volume - Redfield review of wave technologies.  Contact us for details: info(at)redfieldconsulting.co.uk