Blog: A year of celebrations
2013 marked EMEC’s 10th birthday and what a year it has been with our wave and tidal test sites busier than ever.
At Billia Croo in February, we recorded a wave of over 19 metres: the highest wave since we began monitoring sea conditions back in 2003. We welcomed Pelamis Wave Power back as a client with the ‘P2-001’, which they have continued testing alongside ScottishPower Renewables’ ‘P2-002’. Wello and Seatricity deployed their devices for the first time at the site, and following some improvement works on Aquamarine Power’s device in the summer, the ‘Oyster 800’ has been visible again on site since October.
We saw unprecedented levels of activity at the Fall of Warness tidal test site during the year with a number of devices going into the water for the first time: Voith Hydro with their 1MW ‘HyTide’ turbine; OpenHydro with their 7th generation Open-Centre turbine; and Alstom, having recently acquired TGL, with their 2nd generation 1MW ‘DeepGen’ turbine. In addition ANDRITZ Hydro Hammerfest redeployed their 1MW ‘HS1000’, and Scotrenewables have continued testing their ‘SR250’ floating tidal turbine.
At the scale test sites, Nautricity have been gearing up to install their tidal turbine, having tested the Hydrobuoy mooring system for their device during 2013.
In total we have recorded 1000 vessel movements across our sites, an increase of 18% on 2012, and issued 350 permits for working on and accessing the sites, up 30% on 2012.
To mark our 10th year we launched a new logo, with our birthday celebrations continuing throughout the year.
We attended All-Energy in force, exhibiting within the Orkney pavilion. Highlands and Islands Enterprise threw us a 10th birthday party at the close of the first day with a fantastic assortment of Orcadian food and drink, complete with birthday cake. EMEC hosted a well-attended quick fire developer update session in the new Wave and Tidal Seminar Theatre which was placed in the Orkney area – the home of wave and tidal energy.
In October we welcomed delegates from existing and potential marine energy test centres around the world to Orkney and provided a non-stop itinerary showcasing the world-leading work that is taking place at EMEC. The Global Ocean Energy symposium was hailed a success with calls for continuing collaboration between international test centres.
Following the symposium event, our operations director Stuart Baird signed a memorandum of understanding with The Energy Research Institute at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore to support the development of a scale testing facility in the country. Neil Kermode, our Managing Director has furthered our relationships in Japan with trips to the Iwate and Nagasaki prefectures to visit the communities there with our Asian Director Allan Davidson.
We’ve also continued to work with our existing partners in Canada, China, South Korea, Taiwan and the USA and are speaking with several other countries eager to harness the energy of the sea.
It was also very heartening to see the newly extended Hatston Pier in Kirkwall being fully utilised by the tidal energy community just months after being officially opened by Neil Kermode. Over the year the pier has seen seven tidal devices and one wave energy device on its docks demonstrating the great foresight by Orkney Islands Council in investing in the right infrastructure at the right time in support of marine renewables. The construction of the new Copland’s Dock in Stromness is now also well underway.
EMEC is also helping facilitate the Orkney Maritime Support Project – a Scottish Government funded scheme, coordinated by Aquatera and Orcades Marine. The main objective of the project is to co-ordinate a programme of experiments to validate the performance of safe and cost effective approaches to maritime support for marine energy projects.
The Research and Operations Teams have been very busy this year, having worked on a range of over 20 research projects, and making significant infrastructure improvements across the sites. We’ve developed in-house expertise in underwater acoustics, new techniques for data collection in high energy marine environments, and are looking at expanding into new areas such as component and sensor testing. A new marine radar system has been commissioned at both full-scale test sites, and a networked marine VHF radio system installed at Billia Croo enabling direct communication with offshore vessels.
We have begun consolidating the wide range of data gathered over the years into a common database, and have recently secured funding to undertake detailed statistical analysis of the wildlife observations data to see whether we can discern any effects from site usage on local wildlife. One of the highlights of the year was our involvement in the FP7 funded project MaRINET, with a best practice report on environmental monitoring and new study techniques completed, and due to be published in the new year.
We continue to interact with industry, government and regulators through the Developer Research Forum (DRF) and Monitoring Advisory Group (MAG), and via targeted events such as the Underwater Acoustic Workshop for Marine Renewables Regulators and Advisors which EMEC ran in April.
As the home of wave and tidal energy, EMEC has hosted over 400 enthusiastic visitors from around the world, including key figures in the UK (read about some of their experiences on our blog: Scottish Enterprise, RUK, ICE, WWF, ORECAT, and ReNews), to business delegations from across the EU to as far away as Asia, North America and South America.
Having attended, spoken and/or exhibited at over 30 conferences from local to international events, and participated in around 30 working and advisory groups, ranging from Government sponsored task forces to industry strategy groups, EMEC continues to advocate the successful development of marine renewables in every way it can.
We’ve welcomed a plethora of journalists and television crews from across the globe to our marine renewables wonderland including The Financial Times, CNN, and The New York Times, with features broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight, BBC Breakfast News, BBC Country File, ZDF television (German BBC2), and d’VPRO (Dutch Radio 1) to name a few. Further to this, EMEC contributed to a new text book published by Wiley titled “Electricity from Wave and Tide: An Introduction to Marine Energy”.
Earlier in the year we launched a new information leaflet for the general public providing an overview of our work and an insight into the ground-breaking and exciting new industry that is being developed right here in Orkney. And we’ve sponsored a number of events throughout the local community including the Snipe Sailing Championships, local swimming club, Orkney Folk Festival, and a Renewable Energy Day in Eday.
Our staff count has risen to 24 with the introduction of two new roles to EMEC: Michael Butler joined us in August as our new Acoustic Engineer, and Lesley Howard in October as QHSE Manager. We also welcomed Oliver Wragg, our new Commercial Director, who is looking forward to further developing EMEC’s services in the coming years. We were also very lucky to have Keith Alexander, a 4th year theoretical physics student at the University of St Andrews join us over the summer as part of the Talent Scotland Student Placement Programme completing some well-needed market research work.
With 2013 drawing to a close, there’s no better note to end our 10th anniversary year on than Neil Kermode being presented with the Scottish Renewables Green Energy Awards ‘Outstanding Achievement’ award in December. It was completely unexpected for him and very well deserved for all his hard work in running our world-leading test facility and tirelessly lobbying for marine renewables.
And with that, here are Neil’s final thoughts for the year:
“The great pleasure in this job is meeting people ‘in the know’ who come to Orkney and go away buoyed up by the level of activity and enthusiasm that they have encountered. So often their parting words are along the lines of ‘….. I had no idea that things were this far advanced/the machines are so big/that this is really happening/that this is so important’. And they are right. This is happening; it is important.
“Around me I see real people committed to their real jobs here in this developing industry; working daily under hard conditions and on the edge of technical knowledge. It does not get much better than this.
“It has been a remarkable year, but it is just the present year on the journey to a remarkable industry being built.
“2014 will bring more challenges and I know we will rise to meet them.”
