Six marine energy technologies including ones from Aquamarine Power and Pelamis Wave Power (PWP) are to share £22 million funding from the Carbon Trust’s Marine Renewables Proving Fund (MRPF).
The other four firms are Atlantis Resources, Hammerfest Strom U. K., Marine Current Turbines (MCT) and Voith Hydro.
Plans shared by Aquamarine Power and PWP are as follows:
· PWP and its project partner E.ON have secured £4.8 million. The funding will support the manufacture, deployment and testing of company’s second generation Pelamis P2 machine. The first P2 machine is currently under construction at PWP’s headquarters in Leith and will be deployed at the European Marine Energy Centre, Orkney, later this year. The MRPF scheme will allow PWP to increase the scope and pace of trials planned for this machine.
· Aquamarine Power secured £5.1 million of public funding to support the manufacture of the Oyster 2 device. The first full-scale 315kW Oyster was officially launched by Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond MP, MSP at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Stromness in November last year, when it began producing power to the National Grid for the first time. The next-generation 2.5MW Oyster 2 project will consist of three linked wave energy devices powering a single onshore hydro-electric generator.
The new finance will bridge a funding-gap that was stifling progress, according to The Carbon Trust.
All of the devices receiving MRPF funding will be deployed in U. K. waters. This will stimulate supply chain opportunities associated with construction and deployment of these technologies. Over 75% of the funding released through the MRPF will go to the U. K. supply chain.The MRPF will accelerate the most promising marine devices towards the point where they can qualify for the governments’ existing Marine Renewable Deployment Fund (MRDF) support scheme and, ultimately, be deployed commercially at scale.
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