Another Needles trip

Another trip to the Needles today, with a better picture of the tidal effects on the Shingles Bank (the dark in above the lighthouse).

Tidal, tidal everywhere

I was out walking on Yarmouth Pier (the oldest wooden pier still standing the UK), and came across this sign and buoy. Seems that Southampton University has recognised the potential of the tides off Yarmouth and is trying out a turbine.

I'm planning to to drop them an email (srt@soton.ac.uk) to try to learn more.

More great tidal resources

Just took a long walk along the chalk ridge forming the backbone of the Isle of Wight, from Freshwater Bay to the Needles. A lovely day, a lovely walk and fantastic views over the approaches to the Solent, including the notorious Shingles Bank.

The difference in the water over the Shingles Bank and in the Needles Channel stood out clearly (it doesn't in this picture, sorry), with clear rough water on the Bank and flat water in the channel.

The tidal streams through here run at 6 knots or so at Spring Tide, but the amenity impact would be an important factor (it's Cowes Week this week, and the Fastnet race with a few hundred yachts streaming through the Needles Channel starts on Sunday).

If someone could find a way of exploiting the tidal streams without upsetting other users of the marine environment, this woudl be a great place to start: generally not too wavey, close to markets, close to ports - magic!

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!

New Value of ROCs Model

Finally, the new Value of ROCs Model is available.

Building from the Red Book dataset, it allows users to develop forecasts of the numbers of ROCs which may be available in the future, depending on the users' assumptions on the proportions of each renewable technology which may come to productive fruition.

We like to think it offers the most powerful, flexible and justifiable forecast for ROC value now available: and of course it includes all of the changes in the Energy White Paper - banding, RPI linkage retention, grandfathering and cofiring rule changes.