Swedes Install Wave Power Array

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--The first wave of energy converters (WECs) for a 10-megawatt (MW) wave energy project in Sweden have been installed in waters off the country's south-west coast.

Swedish wave energy developer, Seabased (Uppsala, Sweden), announced that the first 10 converters for the Sotenäs project have been installed five miles northwest of Smögen in the Sotenäs region. In the coming months, a further 30 units will be launched and anchored with buoys. The 30-kilowatt (kW) units, designed by Seabased, will then be connected to a substation via submarine cable. The first phase of the project will have a total generating capacity of 1 MW. Seabased is working with Finnish utility, Fortum Oyj (HEL:FUM1V) (Espoo, Finland) on the project, with the aid of subsidies from the Swedish Energy Agency.

The converters were constructed at the company's fabrication facility in Lysekil. The next phase will be to install enough converters to boost the output of the plant to 10 MW, making Sotenäs the world's largest commercial wave energy project. Last May, Seabased, working with Baltic Offshore, completed the laying of a 10-kilometer (km) submarine cable, which will transfer electricity from the array to the substation in Kungshamn.

Seabased is determined to make itself a supplier of turnkey wave energy parks, from carrying out preliminary studies and gaining permits to construction and maintenance services. The company's factory in will be up-scaled during the next three years to allow for 9,000 wave energy converters to be produced per year at full capacity.

The company is in line to supply its converters to a planned 10 MW pre-commercial wave energy power park on a site off the Pembrokeshire coast in Wales. Being developed by Marine Energy Ltd, the expected electricity generation will be 50,000 MWh per year from the project. The power output will be exported via a 33kV/11kV sea cable to the on-shore power distribution grid owned and managed by Western Power Distribution Ltd, the regional power distributor in South Wales and South West England. The project will provide enough power for approximately 10,000 Welsh homes.

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