Research Council UK flagship research consortia in marine energy and has recently won further support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to establish and operate the UK Centre for Marine Energy Research (UKCMER) over the next five years.
Ambitious government targets have been set to install up to 2000MW of wave and tidal current generators in UK waters by the end of this decade. The Crown Estates have leased sites in the Pentland Firth to eight developers aiming to install 1600MW of capacity which represents a potential capital investment of about £4 billion up until 2022.
UKCMER will nucleate academic, industrial and international participation in the deployment challenge of marine energy devices from the initial laboratory testing
through to successful commercial deployment at sea.
A national resource is, therefore, essential for wave and tidal technology companies, and marine energy farm developers, to test at a meaningful scale in representative combined wave and tidal currents
Above: the harvest of energy from the seas begins with Aquamarine Power’s Oyster; below: the new All-Waters Combined Current and Wave Test Facility at the University will open in 2013
on dry land. This would contribute significantly in the de-risking of the significant challenges that lie ahead. To date, there is no such facility in the world that can test wave energy device prototypes around the 1/20th scale in a programmable combined current and wave regime and thus effectively bridge the gap between the laboratory 1/100th scale model and the final prototypes tested at sea. To address this urgent need, the University and EPSRC are investing jointly to construct a £9 million all- waters combined current and wave test facility, the world’s first multi- directional wave and current testing centre for marine energy, to be operational by mid-2013.
A unique facility will be capable of CONTINUED >
1998 University graduate Richard Yemm,
inventor of the Pelamis Wave Energy Converter, launches start-up Ocean Power Delivery Ltd, which is incubated at the University until 2000.
2002 A new curved tank for wave energy
research is commissioned and built by Edinburgh Designs Ltd.
2003 The Institute for Energy Systems is
awarded the lead role in phase I of
the EPSRC-funded SuperGen Marine Energy Research Programme.
2004 The Institute launches the UK Centre
for Marine Renewable Energy to drive forward the development of wave and tidal energy.
2006 The Institute publishes a joint
report with the Scottish Executive confirming the viability of a Scottish target of 40 per cent of electricity generated from renewable sources by 2020.
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IMAGE © AQUAMARINE POWER LTD
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