including heat, currents, tides and waves. The main sea resources around the UK are marine currents, caused by tidal effects and thermal and salinity differences, and waves.
A
s an island sitting in the north east Atlantic, the UK has a huge potential to generate much of the electricity it needs from the power of the sea. Electricity can be extracted from the world’s oceans drawing on many of their properties
around Orkney have been leased to seven companies, with the aim of generating enough electricity to supply 750,000 homes by 2020 from a range of wave and tidal devices.
The Problem with Marine Power
Although much progress has been made in recent times, the marine energy sector is still in its earliest
SME’s Turning the Tide on Marine Power in the UK
The potential of wave power to supply energy is enormous. Future Energy Solutions estimate that the potential global energy resource from marine power is between 8,000 and 80,000 Terawatt hours per year (TWh/y). Around the UK this could be as much as 700 TWh/y, although taking into account the practicalities of harnessing this energy, such as cost and location, a more realistic estimate is 50 TWh/y. To put this in perspective, in 2004 the UK produced 382.7 TWh of electricity.
Renewable energy, including wave power, will play an important role in the UK’s electricity production, particularly as it works to meet a European Union target of generating 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.
Despite the UK government announcing it was dropping plans for a barrage in the Severn Estuary to generate renewable energy, due to costs, tidal power is picking up momentum in the UK. The largest wave and tidal generating programme in the world is planned for the Pentland Firth and waters surrounding the Orkney Islands in Scotland. Areas in the Pentland Firth and
20 entrepreneurcountry
stages - some 15-20 years behind wind energy in terms of its development. The focus is on experimenting to find devices that will reliably capture energy. It is a fertile environment for creativity and innovation and it has given birth to a multitude of new approaches, concepts and ideas. This development process is critical in the ongoing push to explore the potential of wave and tidal energy as a renewable energy source both for the UK and the wider world.
There are many ways in which the energy of the sea can be harnessed. They range from the “sea snake”, which floats on top of the ocean and generates electricity as it rises and falls with the waves, to the SeaGen, which has rotors that spin under the water as the tides rush by them.
Traditionally tidal power has needed tidal flows that create a large difference between high and low tide, such as those found in the Severn, to make them generate enough electricity to be viable. In addition, the further out to sea an instillation is, the more problematic (and expensive) it is to get the electricity back to shore.
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