News this week
It has been a very busy time for EMEC in the fine weather over the last few weeks, with both EON and Scottish Power Renewables P2 machines out on the wave test site, Aquamarine’s Oyster 800 commencing operational testing, and Seatricity preparing to start their installation works.
Earlier in the month Scottish Power and Hammerfest invited a number of national news teams to visit the Andritz Hydro Hammerfest turbine deployed at EMEC’s tidal test site – the broadcasters braved rough conditions on the site, and the results of their trip were shown on BBC and ITV Scottish and national news in reports. Also last week EMEC was visited by a German TV crew making a documentary on Ocean Energy for German public TV and ARTE.
Last week the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee visited EMEC as part of its inquiry into the achievability of the Scottish Government’s 2020 renewable energy targets. It has been considering both oral and written evidence from a range of stakeholders and interested parties and intends to report its findings in September 2012. The Committee is undertaking 3 fact finding visits as part of its evidence gathering, including a visit to Orkney and Caithness. Neil Kermode met the Committee and demonstrated the range of technologies and huge progress being made in terms of marine renewables at EMEC.
EMEC was also pleased to welcome representatives from the Dutch Tidal Testing Centre, who are partners in the MARINET project – MARINET is an EC-funded consortium of 29 partners bringing together 42 marine renewable energy testing facilities in a network and offers access to these facilities at no cost to research groups and companies. For more details see: http://www.fp7-marinet.eu/about_summary.html.
Finally, elsewhere, Stuart Baird, EMEC’s Operations Director visited Oregon to further the partnership EMEC has forged with the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center (NNMREC); and Neil Kermode helped judge the final of the Junior Saltire Prize – well done to all the winners, who put a lot of work into some incredible designs which were tank tested at Strathclyde University.
