News this week

First of all, apologies to anyone who has had difficulty contacting EMEC by phone this week or been cut off mid conversation! We have been experiencing problems with our phone system hardware. Thanks to the efforts of our Maintenance Technician this should be resolved on Wednesday next week.

Upgrade works at Black Craig lookout point have begun this week. A spell of fine weather saw major roof refurbishment underway and we hope the new environmental monitoring posts will commence shortly.
Operations have received AIS equipment for the test sites at Eday and Billia Croo. Commissioning will be begin next week for monitoring vessel movements within our test sites.

Matthew Finn and Neil Kermode attended the SETIS workshop on Ocean Energy in Edinburgh on 16 January. This productive session took place to get a European wide perspective on the focus of research and funding in Ocean Energy. Neil gave a presentation at the dinner held on the previous evening.

Visitors this week included a return visit from Caroline Wickham-Jones who gave a presentation to EMEC and OREF members on Scotland’s submerged archaeological landscapes with particular reference to current research in Orkney. This was an extremely interesting presentation and Caroline will be issuing some further information for developers shortly. On the same day, Monday 19 January, we were pleased to welcome three visitors from Total – Phillippe Poulain and Thomas Renault from Paris and Peter Macalister-Hall from Total E&P UK. They received a short presentation and a visit to Billia Croo. Photograph above shows the three Total visitors together with Emmanuel Osalusi from the Renewable Energy Group at ICIT.