Tidal and Wave energy projects

Good news this week with the announcement of a large number of full scale tidal and wave energy projects in the Pentland Firth, Scotland. I mentioned a few months ago UK companies are largely at the front of the pack when it comes to this new technology.

This week some of the companies I mentioned are starting the process of planning and building large farms of tidal and wave devices that will produce some 1.2GW of electricity (the equivalent of a very large power station). However this hides a small added bonus, which is the fact that tidal energy device (and possibly wave) will provide more power (watts of energy over time) than a similarly rated wind turbine. So 1.2GW of tidal and wave energy will produce more power than the same capacity wind farm.

This bodes well for future UK marine engineering (assuming they are fabricated in the UK) since other farms will be built around the world, as well as more UK farms.

Examples are in India where one district is considering a 1.2GW farm and in Korea where UK company Lunar Energy are developing a 300MW farm.

New Energy Focus