Tidal Energy

Introduction

Scotland’s Highlands and Islands have more than their share of tidal energy resources. The Pentland Firth Strategic Area alone hosts 6 of the top 10 tidal energy sites in the UK. The Shetland Islands and the waters around Argyll and the islands are also considered to have great potential for generating tidal energy.

Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters – International Interest and Local Expertise

Seabed owners The Crown Estate expect the Pentland Firth strategic area to be generating up to 1.6GW (gigawatts) from tidal and wave device deployment by 2020.

This area of sea off the northern coast of mainland Scotland, and encompassing the waters around the Orkney Islands, contains 50% of the UK’s tidal resource and 25% of Europe’s tidal resource.

In March 2010, the Crown Estate announced those bidders who were successful in obtaining agreements for lease to deploy their devices in the Pentland Firth and Orkney waters as part of its Round 1 offer of commercial scale seabed leases for tidal and wave developments.

Eleven sites were awarded under the process - six for wave energy development and five for tidal.  The successful bidders with wave projects are SSE Renewables, Pelamis Wave Power, ScottishPower Renewables, Aquamarine and E.ON Climate and Renewables.  Those hoping to progress tidal projects are ScottishPower Renewables, SSE Renewables, Meygen and Marine Current Turbines.

Commercial-scale Device Testing

A globally important hub for advancement of tidal device research and development (as well as wavepower devices) is the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney, which opened its tidal research facilities in 2007. Developers are able to test commercial-scale, grid-connected prototypes in realistic sea conditions.

EMEC’s tidal test site is located at the Fall of Warness, off the island of Eday. The 4km by 2km channel has powerful marine currents and seven test berths are now in place at depths ranging from 12m to 50m.

Currently (early 2012), the following tidal developers are active on the tidal site deploying and testing their devices: OpenHydro, Tidal Generation Ltd, Atlantis Resources Corporation, Hammerfest Strom, Voth Hydro and Scotrenewables.

Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Bluewater Energy Services are due on the site later this year.

Beside its main task of working with individual developers to monitor their own proprietary devices, EMEC runs other distinct research activity. This includes “MetOcean” monitoring to collect data on current and wave behaviour in varying weather, to help inform device design and assessment.

Environmental Research

The Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), in Argyll, has been looking at possible impacts of tidal and wave devices on the marine environment.

SAMS has been working in conjunction with EMEC to develop methodologies and equipment to collect acoustic baseline data at the Orkney tidal test site, so that long-term monitoring can be conducted to assess any impacts on fish, sea mammals and birds.