Scottish Power to lead the charge towards tidal power

By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent
Published: September 28 2008 16:12

Scotland is to become a pioneer in generating electricity from the sea, Scottish Power will say on Monday when it unveils plans for the world’s biggest tidal power project and a factory to make tidal turbines.
Three sites around the coasts of Scotland and Northern Ireland have been chosen, at each of which up to 20 undersea power-generating turbines will be installed from next year.

Scottish Power Renewables also plans to build the tidal power turbines in Scotland, proposing to set up a manufacturing facility to export the turbines to other electricity utilities around the world.
“This is a historic day for the development of marine energy,” said Keith Anderson, director of Scottish Power Renewables, a unit of Iberdrola acquired under the £11.6bn takeover of the utility company by the Spanish group in 2006.
The investment is likely to total more than £100m in the first phase of the project. Each turbine will have a generating capacity of 1 megawatt, and if 60 are put in place the combined output would be enough to power more than 40,000 homes.
Tidal power is viewed as one of the most promising forms of renewable energy, because unlike wind and solar energy, it is reliable and predictable. The flow of tides can be used to turn turbines for 23 hours a day, with a small lull when the tides are changing from ebb to flow. The strength of the tide, and therefore the electricity produced, varies through the day, but in a predictable fashion.
The government has recently discovered an enthusiasm for tidal power, ordering a consultation on a possible tidal scheme in the Severn estuary which could produce as much as 5 per cent of the UK’s electricity.
But although a handful of tidal schemes have been generating electricity on a small scale, the technology has been slow to take off.
ScottishPower acknowledged that if the schemes were to be successful, grid connections would have to be built “as a matter of urgency”.
The Scottish executive recently said it would increase subsidies for tidal power. Under this proposal, for every megawatt of electricity produced by tidal power, the generator would receive about four times what a fossil fuel generator would receive.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008