Blog: The peaks and troughs of 2014
Last year I finished my message saying “2014 will bring more challenges and I know we will rise to meet them”. Well the challenges came, we met most of them and some of them are just coming at us now, right at the year’s end.
As I write this we are still riding out ripples and waves from the recent unwelcome announcements; we are taking stock of the changed ‘seascape’, and know that EMEC is going to have to adapt to the new conditions. But I am pleased to say that the underlying swell remains in the right direction. We – and I mean everyone in the marine renewables industry – are still doing the right things in the right way in the right place for the right reasons.
However our timing has just taken a knock.
No one said that marine energy was going to be easy, and although no one wanted these setbacks, we should not forget that the progress we have made remains remarkable.
We have shown you can turn sea-water into electricity from both waves and tides, and we have opened the eyes of the world to the opportunities that are just off their shores.
People now see the seas as not only the main means by which we move goods and undertake trade, moderate our climate, produce food, and more recently oil, to sustain us. They now have a glimpse of the energy we have shown we can sustainably harvest and the jobs this can support.
So at the end of a hard year I make no apology for reminding people of the John F. Kennedy quote over the door here at the EMEC office:
“The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by the cynics and critics whose vision is limited by obvious realities. We need people who can dream of things that never were.”
Only now you don’t have to just dream: you can see the benefits.
The foundations of the new reality continue to be built here day by day, MWh by MWh, contract by contract.
2015 will see us build on those sound foundations and make sure this is the first generation to benefit from marine energy.
Neil Kermode, Managing Director, EMEC
Highlights (and lowlights) of 2014
Test site activity
In addition to EMEC’s established test sites, in July The Crown Estate awarded EMEC seabed rights to progress a tidal stream project in the Stronsay Firth in Orkney, and to develop new marine energy sites in Harris and Islay. EMEC will manage these sites in conjunction with its local partners and sub-let areas of seabed for developers to progress projects.
We have launched two new animations illustrating the infrastructure provided by EMEC at our grid-connected wave and tidal test sites where a total of 12 wave and tidal energy developers have tested devices during 2014 (see table below).
Developers testing at EMEC in 2014
Developer | Device | Rated capacity | Location |
|
---|---|---|---|---|
Wave | Aquamarine Power Ltd | Oyster 800 | 800kW | Billia Croo |
Wave | Pelamis Wave Power | P2-001 | 750kW | Billia Croo |
Wave | ScottishPower Renewables | P2-002 | 750kW | Billia Croo |
Wave | Seatricity | Oceanus | 800kW | Billia Croo |
Wave | Wello Oy | Penguin | 500kW | Billia Croo |
Tidal | TGL (a wholly owned Alstom Company) | DeepGen | 1MW | Fall of Warness |
Tidal | ANDRITZ HYDRO Hammerfest | HS1000 | 1MW | Fall of Warness |
Tidal | OpenHydro | Open Centre Turbine | 0.25MW | Fall of Warness |
Tidal | Scotrenewables Tidal Power Ltd | SR250 | 0.25MW | Fall of Warness |
Tidal | Voith | Hy-Tide | 1MW | Fall of Warness |
Tidal | Nautricity | Cormat | Non grid connected | Shapinsay Sound |
Tidal | Magallanes | ATIR | Non grid connected | Shapinsay Sound |
Notable public announcements included:
- Aquamarine Power successfully replaced the cylinder module on their Oyster 800 wave machine during a comprehensive summer refit: http://tinyurl.com/pmq7tfa
- The two Pelamis P2 machines collectively reached a milestone 10,000 hours of grid connected operations: http://tinyurl.com/nad3zel
- Wello successfully completed the third test season of the Penguin wave energy converter – the device was deployed on site for six months continuously. All components inside the device are still original from 2011 building further confidence to the durability and survivability of the design: http://tinyurl.com/oljfa58
- Alstom’s 1MW tidal turbine generated over 1GWh of electricity, in actual operating conditions, to the Scottish grid: http://tinyurl.com/nsah3ky
- Andritz Hydro Hammerfest continued generating to the grid with the HS1000, which led to an order from MeyGen Ltd to supply three 1.5MW tidal turbines to the planned tidal array in the Inner Sound of the Pentland Firth: http://tinyurl.com/n9u2n87
- OpenHydro installed their 7th generation OpenCentre turbine at their Fall of Warness test rig.
- Scotrenewables’ commenced fabrication of the superstructure for the SR2000 2MW turbine, which will be tested at EMEC in 2015: http://tinyurl.com/ndff3hg
- Voith continued their grid-connected turbine testing and shared a video of their successful turbine installation: http://tinyurl.com/mvhme8q
New deployments:
- Nautricity successfully deployed their CoRMaT tidal turbine at EMEC’s Shapinsay Sound site in May with lessons learned illustrated in a very interesting case study.
- Magallanes installed their 1:10 scale ‘ATIR’ prototype at EMEC’s Shapinsay Sound test site in November: http://tinyurl.com/nantrf7
- Also in November, North Sea Systems completed trials of their CableFish® survey system for touchdown monitoring and cable route survey at EMEC.
- Bluewater Energy Services announced a project to develop a low-cost anchor bag and mooring line system, which will be tested at the Fall of Warness in 2015. The £1.8M project, is funded by the Scottish Government under the Marine Renewables Commercialisation Fund.
Unfortunately, there were also some setbacks, most notably for the wave energy sector when Pelamis Wave Power announced it was going into administration and Aquamarine Power announced plans to downsize their business.
This was undoubtedly a big setback in the mission to learn how to harvest energy from the sea, but here at EMEC we see the clever, innovative work that is being done at our test sites to bring an idea to reality, and the prize is still there. As Neil Kermode said in EMEC’s response to the Pelamis announcement:
“The waves will keep pounding into the Orkney coastline and the world is still using precious and irreplaceable fossil fuels at an increasing rate. We know marine energy will have its day.”
EMEC activity
In addition to managing the test sites and issuing permits (over 180 issued in 2014 alone), we’ve been progressing with a number of other initiatives throughout the year here in Orkney. Key projects include:
- The Scottish Government awarded a share of the Marine Renewables Commercialisation Fund (MRCF) to the EMEC to support further development of our Integrated Measurement Platform – a seabed ‘pod’ designed to measure a variety of parameters in tidal flows. Following development throughout 2014, the ‘EMEC-IMP’ will be deployed in early 2015.
- In collaboration with the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, we hosted a workshop in March to review the existing suite of marine renewable energy standards and identify areas where new standards require to be developed. The report from the workshop is available to read online: http://www.emec.org.uk/review-of-standards-for-marine-renewables/.
- In November we launched EMEC-ETV (Environmental Technology Verification) – an EU initiative to help bring new low-carbon technologies to market – having attained the International Standard ISO/IEC 17020 for verification of new environmental technologies and being approved as an assessor under the EU’s ETV scheme.
- The Orkney Vessel Trials project, which has been facilitated by Orkney consultancy Aquatera Ltd, in association with EMEC, demonstrated the potential for considerable cost savings using the capabilities of smaller support vessels in the marine renewables industry. The report is available to download here: Press release: Orkney vessel trials demonstrate cost savings for marine energy
- Funded by The Crown Estate, EMEC has been reviewing the reliability of our subsea cables to help inform on the performance of subsea cabling in high energy environments, with the report will be published in early 2015.
- We also secured funding for an innovative project to produce hydrogen from tidal energy to prevent the inadequacies of the present grid connections to the islands thwarting tidal research.
Events
In June, EMEC hosted the first EU Energy Day dedicated to ocean energy in partnership with Ocean Energy Europe, the trade association for ocean renewables in Europe. At the Orkney Ocean Energy Day, as part of the EU’s Sustainable Energy Week calendar of events, representatives from the European Commission, technology companies from across Europe, and local residents visited sites around Orkney to share understanding of how the industry has developed to this point and what is required to take it further.
In November, EMEC and FORCE (the Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy) jointly hosted a discussion forum for international open-water test centres in Halifax, Canada, in association with the International Conference on Ocean Energy (ICOE). Bringing together operational and planned test sites from around the world for the second time, the event built on EMEC’s Global Ocean Energy symposium held in Orkney, Scotland, in 2013, which created a global network focused on collaborative opportunities for test centres in support of the developing ocean energy industry.
Throughout the year EMEC attended, spoke and/or exhibited at over 40 events throughout the world from All-Energy in Aberdeen, Ocean Energy Europe in France, the International Conference on Ocean Energy in Canada, to the Grand Renewable Energy International Conference & Exhibition in Tokyo, Japan. Participating 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.
If you’d like to keep track of what conferences and events we’ll be attending in 2015, check out our Events Calendar early in the New Year.
Staff changes
The EMEC team has continued to grow throughout 2014 as welcomed 6 new staff to the Old Academy bringing our staff role to 27. Andrina Wick joined us in January taking on the post of Administration Officer, with Danielle Moodie beginning a new role as PA to the Executive Team. Dave Wakefield started at EMEC in February as QHSE Manager, and later taking on the new role as ETV Manager as well to support the development of EMEC-ETV.
In August Caitlin Long joined our Research team as Research and Consents Officer, superseding Christina Bristow who has been seconded to Orkney Renewable Energy Forum as their Development Manager. Danielle Wick took on the role of Administration Assistant to support Dave in the effective operation of EMEC’s Integrated Management System.
Elaine Buck joined us in September as Technical Business Development Manager supporting EMEC’s Commercial Team in the development of projects for wave and tidal energy. And Paul Shearer took on the role of Asset Maintenance Technician maintaining the company’s marine and electrical assets to a high standard, as Mark Wemyss left us for pastures new.
We have welcomed two new Directors to the EMEC Board this year as well, bidding farewell to our Chairman Bill Edgar who headed the company since 2005. Andrew Mill, who was the first Managing Director of EMEC from 2003 to 2005 returned to the company as Chairman, whilst Ron Chapman joined the board as Non-Executive Director.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
That’s it from the EMEC team for this year. Thank you to all our clients, suppliers, funders and supporters, visitors from around the world, and everybody in the local community for your continued support and cooperation throughout 2014.
We look forward to working with you in 2015 as we continue to work towards a future sustainably powered by the sea.