I don't believe it!

Sad to report, Trident Energy's wave energy prototype which was being deployed off Southwold came off its barge and capsized. Details here and the company's own take on things here.

Fortunately no injuries were sustained, and the damage to the device is being assessed.

Aquamarine closes £10 million funding

News today is that Aquamarine, developer of the Oyster wave devices recently installed at EMEC in Orkney, has closed a £10 million equity financing (as a precursor to another £40 million to be raised later). Details here.This funding, together with the deployment at EMEC, projects Aquamarine into the top rank of wave energy devices.

The company's press release is here.

Reading...

Lots and lots to read following various publications this week. About 750 pages in fact. As soon as I've got my head around some of it, I'll post in more detail

Floating wind turbine - -near to installation

Some while ago, I remember being rather dismissive of a floating wind turbine concept being proposed for the Minch. StatoilHydro has been approaching the problem with a rather more elegant approach, and is now close to installing the prototype 2.3 MW Hywind turbine offshore Norway. Details here.

The turbine is going into a water depth of 220 m, so the water depth is roughly twice the hub height. This may well be a solution to Norway's offshore wind needs, as the country isn't blessed with much shallow water shelf, but I'm struggling to think of suitable locations on the UKCS.

We haven't been able to find any cost information for the project though - it would be interesting to see how it stacks up against "conventional" offshore wind.

Whatever happens, we'll keep an interested eye on how the 2 year testing programme evolves.

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.