News this week

2010 has been an incredible year for EMEC, with a number of new clients arriving. On the tidal site we saw the installation of the Atlantis AK1000, successful generation by Tidal Generation Limited, and continued testing by OpenHydro. On the wave test site Aquamarine’s Oyster has been on site for the full year, and construction work for their Oyster 2 project is underway. We also welcomed the EON P2 machine for it’s first trials at Billia Croo. Internally the quality of our work came up for periodic review and re-examined by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service and delighted that our accreditation as the world’s only testing laboratory for wave and tidal energy convertors was renewed.

We look forward to working with several more companies due to arrive over the course of 2011 which is likely to be another busy year for the industry. In particular we are looking forward to the opening of our new scale test facilities – broadening the range and size of testing facilities we can offer here in Orkney.

In 2010 we also successfully laid 3 new cables; creating two new test berths at the tidal test site off Eday, and another at the Billia Croo wave test site. EMEC also used the opportunity to carry out another project in parallel: to fit bespoke cable terminations to the existing and new cables on site. This was a challenging project performed in ever changing conditions (up to 6 knots of current at the tidal site for example) and was carried out with great professionalism by the teams involved under EMEC management, to time and budget. Well done to everyone who played their part.

In addition to our testing work in Orkney, as ever, EMEC has continued contributing to the advancement of the marine renewables industry at large – in the last year EMEC staff:

• Expanded and improved data collection and monitoring contributing to new research agendas,
• progressed 5 of EMEC’s industry standards for international adoption as part of the International Electrotechnical Commission
• Participated in 25 National and International Conferences (as far afield as the USA, New Zealand, and Taiwan)
• Shared expertise in 22 industry working groups and advisory groups, and
• Hosted almost 400 visitors including Government Ministers from Chile, industrial and investment corporations from Japan, and TV crews from China, India, and all across Europe.
• This is all in recognition of the fact that with 5 machines in the water in 2010, EMEC activity in Orkney is truly world leading in the development of Marine Energy.

As the festive season approaches, we would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all our clients, suppliers, government and regulatory agencies, visitors from around the world, and everybody in the local community for continued support and cooperation.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!