Tuesday, November 3rd 2009
Lisbon, Portugal:

Speaking at the Lisbon Ocean Power Conference, Peter Fraenkel, Technical Director and co-founder of Marine Current Turbines, the Bristol company that designed and developed SeaGen, the world’s only commercial scale tidal turbine, told delegates that SeaGen is running at full power and fully automatically exactly as planned.

Peter Fraenkel said: “We are delighted with SeaGen’s performance. It is running reliably and delivering more energy than originally expected in an extremely aggressive environment. It should be remembered it is being driven by a wall of water 27m deep, similar to the height of the Tower of London, that surges back and forth with every tide through the Strangford Narrows in Northern Ireland at speeds of up to 10 miles per hour. We are getting more energy than expected mainly because the resource is more energetic than originally predicted during earlier surveys”

SeaGen has already delivered over 350 MWh into the Northern Irish electricity grid. The twin generators typically produce an average of 5MWh of electricity during the 6¼ hours of each ebb and each flood tide. This is enough energy to meet the average electricity needs for 1500 UK homes.

The SeaGen turbine, with its twin 16m diameter rotors, is officially accredited to OFGEM as a “UK power station”, the first tidal power system to secure this. It is earning revenue from the sale of the power that is being generated and it also earns ROCs, the Renewable Obligation Certificates that are awarded for clean renewable generation.

Martin Wright, Managing Director of MCT, commented: “We are delighted to have moved on from the initial period of commissioning and testing to demonstrating that this is a practical method of generation that really does do exactly what it says on the label. It is a hugely significant milestone for the company to be selling electricity consistently and earning revenue”.

Although SeaGen has been operational for most of this year, it was not until September that consent was given to operate it without having to have environmental scientists (marine mammal observers) on board and onshore. This was an initial requirement under the licensing arrangements to ensure that SeaGen did not adversely affect the marine mammals that are a protected feature of the local waters and restricted SeaGen’s uninterrupted running. However extensive experience gained so far suggests the seals and porpoises are not at any significant risk and as a result SeaGen is now permitted to operate unattended and by remote control, as was originally intended.

For the time being an operator onshore will continue to monitor a sonar image of the passing flow which can show up any seal that ventures too close to the rotors, and the operator has the facility to stop the machine. As confidence and the body of evidence grows, it is expected that full 24 hour running will be permitted in the near future.

Martin Wright added: “Building on our experience in Stanford Lough, the team at MCT are working to deploy tidal turbine arrays in UK and overseas waters, and we are working on new scaled-up developments from SeaGen that promise to generate power at a lower cost. The expectation is that this radical new technology can be developed within five to ten years to make a significant contribution to our future energy needs. Given suitable market incentives, SeaGen demonstrates that marine renewable energy is at the cusp of forming the basis for a new UK industry with considerable world-wide export potential.”

Illustrations follow:- 



This graph shows SeaGen’s output on a typical tide (roughly halfway between Neaps and Springs). The black trace shows the speed of the current in m/s (on the right hand scale). The red trace from the instrumentation is the corresponding response from SeaGen, showing the power and shows how it ramps up after slack tide to 1200kW at which point the control system holds the power constant. The dip in the trace was a deliberate shut-down using the pitch control system to stop the rotor safely and it shows how the system then restarted and went back to full power. This illustrates the controllability of the turbines, a vital requirement for any power plant.
The area under the red trace is the energy delivered, and on this occasion it was 5.2MWh delivered on that tide.
The picture below shows SeaGen in a strong flow – the wake is clearly visible. (Photo courtesy Dr D Erwin)

Notes to Editors:
1. Marine Current Turbines Ltd (www.marineturbines.com) is based in Bristol, England. The company was established in 2000 and its principal corporate shareholders include BankInvest, ESB International, EDF Energy, Guernsey Electricity and Triodos Bank. In September 2009, MCT was ranked the world’s top tidal energy company in The Guardian/Clean Tech Global 100 survey, and in June 2009 won Renewable Energy Developer of the Year in the UK Renewable Energy Association Annual Awards.

For further information:
Marine Current Turbines
Martin Wright, Managing Director
Tel: +44 (0)117 979 1888 / +44 (0)7785 340671
or
Paul Taylor, Taylor Keogh Communications
Tel: +44 (0) 20 3170 8465 / +44 (0)7966 782611