In my last stop of my “Grand Tour” I met with Neil Kermode, director of the European Marine Energy Center in Stromness, Scotland. A visit to this center is not for the lighthearted- it requires an eight hour train ride from Edinburgh and then a two hour ferry to Stromness. I heard it was easier and more expensive to fly into Kirkwall (the main “city” of less than 10,000 residents on the Orkneys). After missing the first ferry I was supposed to take, I was finally able to meet Mr. Kermode last week. The director of the European Marine Energy Center was first a civil engineer who took up SCUBA diving as a hobby. Naturally when he was offered the chance to head EMEC after the previous director left for NaREC, Mr. Kermode jumped at the opportunity.
The European Marine Energy Center was founded in 2000 when the Science and Technology Committee in the UK government allocated 18 million pounds to accelerate the marine energy industry. The government saw this investment as more efficient then handing over smaller sums of money to many different businesses or groups. By establishing one place where researchers and developers could go to test their devices, the UK government made history. This was and still is the only in-situ test site in the world where devices can get grid connected while being exposed to the open ocean. The devices must be full-scale since the waves that crash here can be up to 15 m in amplitude. By setting up the necessary infrastructure (permits, licenses, electrical wires) in one spot, the UK government took the burden off the developers to each come up with their own test sites. Furthermore, EMEC is standardizing the evaluation process so it will become clear to the interested parties which devices perform better. Developers can then use these test results when they go to utility companies to prove to them how their device performed.
I visited the wave test center site at Billia Croo, which opened in 2000, when the center opened is now currently under construction and expansion. AquaMarine is currently installing their Oyster device in the waters just about 20 m offshore. In the picture, you can see the rig, which they have made to facilatate the installation of the device. Their plan is to drill four holes in order to place a “table” on the seafloor. Their Oyster will then be attached to this table, allowing it a full range of motion. The device produces electricity when the flap moves back and forth with the waves, while the base of it remains stationary since as it is attached to the table. At the end of the summer, Pelamis Wave Power and Ocean Power Technologies will begin to install the moorings for their devices. Mr. Kermode has seen these the manufacturing of these devices and is excited for their arrival. There are four cables that run from the station on land to allow four different devices grid connections. EMEC is expanding their substation to house more electrical equipment, due to the low power quality that these devices will deliver.
Mr. Kermode believes that in 2-3 years, there will be about a dozen or so machines running continuously at test sites around the world (in Mayo, Ireland, the pilot zone in Portugal). In about a decade he believes we will se a few commercial marine energy farms sprouting up in these research hotspots and in two decades we will be able to flip through a catalog of devices that can be used for different conditions. However, he warns me that this timeline, like all things in the renewables industry, is subject to the price of oil. He is confident, however, that the UK government, especially the Scottish Parliament will continue to the support their research. Right now, the policymakers remain enthusiastic, albeit nervous, about the advancement of this industry.
While I hope to write up some more summary thoughts on my trip, I leave you with one parting thought I had on the long train ride back down:
I started this trip asking Dr. Sorensen if this really was going to happen- if he really believed we would see wave energy devices in the water.
I ended the trip asking Mr. Kermode if it was possible that we would not see commercial wave energy farms in the near future.
