New device for wave site

EMEC is delighted to announce another new technology to be tested at our wave site.

Seatricity are the latest developers to secure a berth at EMEC. The Seatricity concept involves a float travelling up and down with the waves, operating a pump to pressurize sea water which is piped ashore. Inidividual pumps are connected together, and once ashore the pressurized sea water is used to drive a standard hydroelectric turbine to produce electricity.

Director Bob Tillotson said “Seatricity is delighted to have reached agreement with EMEC to test our wave energy devices at the Billia Croo test site in Orkney.

Our device has been 4 years in development and a working prototype has been fully tested in the Atlantic Ocean off Antigua. The results of these tests are very encouraging and we see it as a logical move to progress to the even more challenging conditions that exist at Billia Croo.

Initially, we will manufacture, in Scotland and England, 50 of our devices, to be installed in an array which will be linked to a pipeline to feed high pressure seawater to a land based hydro generating station. The capacity of this installation will be 1 Megawatt, which at our expected 50% capacity factor is sufficient to supply 1000 UK average households.

We anticipate having the plant operational in the spring of 2012 and we look forward to working with EMEC and other local companies in Orkney to achieve this goal.”