And the process of getting approval for underwater turbines can be extremely long-winded. Unlike offshore wind, there is no official target for marine energy including tidal stream power, which is needed to drive investment. “It was almost an impossible job to raise investment but since we’ve managed to get investment from major oil and gas providers and we’ve got an active inbound interest in equity investment right now,” says Scott. The government’s renewed faith in the sector is already attracting a surprising range of private-sector investors. These projects are expected to deliver a near fivefold increase in the energy from British tidal power by 2027, upping the capacity installed from 10.4 megawatts to 51.2 megawatts. Four commercial-scale tidal energy bids, including two from Orbital Marine and one from Simec Atlantis, were successful. But at the end of last year the ministers allocated £20m worth of funding to the sector, under the government’s “contract for difference” scheme, which provides a guaranteed price for renewable energy. Ringfenced funding was introduced in 2008 but scrapped in 2016, leading to the liquidation of some developers and restricting the industry to small-scale prototype turbines for five years. Government support, however, has been patchy. ![]() “It provides the energy buffer that you need in a system that will increasingly depend on irregular power.” But we know for certain when the tides come in and go out,” says Cheeseman. “Offshore wind and solar are intermittent. While tidal power is always likely to supply a smaller proportion of Britain’s renewable energy, the report says it could play a crucial part in decarbonising the nation’s energy system. It just feels like things have really started to change.” We’ve won a feasibility study to look at the potential for an array in Indonesia. “We are doubling the size of our Shetland tidal array from three to six turbines and we’ve exported our first turbine to Canada. “I’m feeling very excited about the industry and about what we are doing,” says John Meagher, director of business development at Nova Innovation, which operates seabed-mounted turbines off the remote Shetland Islands. Orders are even coming in from the rest of the world. “We’ve just won a government contract to expand that site from what is now 6 megawatts to take it all the way up to 34 megawatts – enough power for 68,000 homes. “We’ve got the world’s largest tidal stream project off the coast of Caithness – 70% of the global tidal output has come from that site,” says Sean Parsons, the company’s external affairs director. “This is the first time in my 20 years in marine renewables that we’ve got a genuine chance of making tidal stream energy work commercially.”Īnother pioneering developer, Simec Atlantis Energy, is planning to install up to 56 turbines on the seabed at the northernmost tip of Scotland by 2027. We want to start manufacturing consistently and pull in more commercial investment,” says Andrew Scott, the company’s chief executive. ![]() “We want this to kickstart a real phase of change for us. Each platform can generate enough power for 2,000 homes and creates an estimated 100 jobs, according to the firm. Orbital Marine, which operates what it says are the world’s most powerful turbines below a plane-like floating platform near Orkney, has secured government funding to deploy three more floating turbines next year. “There is no reason tidal can’t follow that same route.” This is the perfect blueprint for tidal stream energy,” he says. “In the early days of offshore wind, you had strong government support. But he says the sector still needs careful nurturing to ensure it follows the successful trajectory of offshore wind, which in 11 years has gone from generating only enough energy for 4% of British homes to generating enough for 33% of British homes. Simon Cheeseman from the research center argues tidal stream energy is at the “point of commercialisation” as companies are keen to scale up production and deployment. The cost of generating power from tidal streams has fallen by 40% since 2018 – and a report published last month by a government-backed research centre, Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, forecasts prices could fall below nuclear energy in little over a decade, with one-megawatt hour of power due to cost as little as £78 by 2035 compared with £92.50 for the new Hinkley Point C power plant.
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