Crown Estate plans tidal power future in Scotland

Developers have a month to apply for licenses to install marine power stations in the area around Pentland Firth
Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday November 18 2008 10.38 GMT

The Crown Estate has invited proposals from developers to install the UK's first commercial marine power sites in the area around Pentland Firth in north Scotland.
This first round of development is intended to generate 700MW of clean electricity from wave and tidal sources by 2020.
"In this country we are widely recognised as having both the technological lead and some of the best wave and tidal resources in the world," said Rob Hastings, the Crown Estate's director of the marine estate. "It is essential that this technology is given every opportunity to thrive here, in our waters, to the benefit of the environment, the energy industry, and the wider Scottish economy."
Tidal streams are seen by many as a plentiful and predictable supply of clean energy. The most conservative estimates suggest there is at least five gigawatts of power in tidal flows around the country, but there could be as much as 15GW. The Pentland Firth area contains six of the top 10 sites in the UK for tidal power development and it has been nicknamed the Saudi Arabia of marine energy.
The announcement comes a few months after the UK's first commercial-scale marine turbine, SeaGen, was plugged into the national grid in at Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland. This device can generate power at 150kW with plans to increase power to 1,200kW, enough for about 1,000 homes, when up to full speed.
SeaGen, designed and built by the Bristol-based tidal energy company Marine Current Turbines (MCT), is a likely candidate for the farms of machines that the Crown Estate wants to commission in Pentland Firth.
Simon Grey, chief executive of the Scottish marine energy company AWS Ocean Energy, welcomed the Crown Estate's plans. "This provides another important spur to the commercial development of marine energy in Scotland and the UK. AWS Ocean is developing a range of technologies for use in the wave and tidal sector, such as affordable anchoring solutions, that will be just as vital as the generation systems in maximising the energy potential of the Pentland Firth."
He added: "From our own experience, the developers of wave and tidal technologies face enormous challenges in rough and inhospitable environments to extract the energy on a year-round, long-term and sustainable basis."
The Crown Estate said that the initial machines it plans to commission will be full-size demonstration devices deployed in small arrays. Large-scale marine devices would require more investment in the national grid to carry the power to where it is needed.
Developers have a month to apply for licenses to install the marine power stations, and the Crown Estate plans to make its final decisions on successful applicants next summer.
Last month, the Crown Estate, helped to trigger a resurgence of interest for wind projects in the deep waters off Britain by promising to invest in projects at a time when many schemes are struggling in the face of planning delays and other problems.
The decision by the Crown Estate to pay up to half of all pre-construction development costs brought a huge surge in applications for the latest round of licensing, with almost 100 companies wanting to build wind farms far into the North Sea.