U.K.'s Wave Hub Open for Business

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--The world's leading wave energy testing facility is open for business after being "plugged in" to the electricity grid on the coast of Cornwall, in southwest England.

Wave Hub is a giant, grid-connected socket that lies on the seabed 16 kilometres off the Cornwall coast. It has been designed to connect cutting-edge wave energy devices for commercial testing. The first customer will be Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) (Pennington, New Jersey), which will be connecting its PowerBuoy device, which aims to produce up to 3 megawatts (MW).

The news comes as ScottishPower Renewables and E.ON UK (Coventry, England), which is part of the German energy giant E.ON AG (OTC:EONGY) (Duesseldorf, Germany), have joined forces to test two Pelamis wave-power machines off Orkney, in the seas north of Scotland. Last May, E.ON ended its involvement in the Wave Hub project. For related news, see May 6, 2009, article - E.ON Pulls Plug on U.K. Wave Farm.

Wave Hub's first complete test, which involved testing the connection of the hub via its 33-kilovolt (kV) subsea cable to a new substation that had been constructed at Hayle, went smoothly, according to its general manager, Guy Lavender.

"We've been continually testing the integrity of the whole system during the installation process, but yesterday was the first time it was fully energised and plugged in to the grid, and I'm delighted to say that it went without a hitch," Lavender said. "From today the system will be permanently energized and monitored, so Wave Hub is well and truly open for business."

Wave Hub, which cost £42 million ($64 million) to construct, is a 12-ton steel chamber that looks like a large electrical plug socket, sits on the seabed at a depth of 55 metres, and allows for up to four wave energy companies to plug in their devices for testing and power generation. That power can now be transmitted to the grid. The hub has the ability to deal with up to 20 MW of electricity and can be scaled up to 50 MW in the future.

There is some uncertainty over the future of Wave Hub, however, following a decision by the U.K.'s new coalition government to scrap the South West Regional Development Agency, which originally oversaw the project.

"There has been some speculation about Wave Hub's future given that the South West RDA is due to be abolished by March 2012, but the future of Wave Hub and its ongoing operation are not in doubt, and the project is fully funded as we continue to seek commercial customers," Lavender said. "What we don't yet know is who will own the asset when the RDA is gone, and that is being discussed. But that has no impact on Wave Hub's continued role as a vital facility for the development of the wave energy industry in the U.K. and overseas."

In Scotland, E.ON and ScottishPower's first device is being tested at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney while the second machine, which will be built for ScottishPower Renewables, will be installed alongside the E.ON device next year. Both devices are second generation, 750-kW Pelamis P2 devices, measuring up to 180 metres long.

E.ON successfully won two 50-MW tidal sites off the coast of Orkney as part of the Crown Estate's recent Round 1 Marine leasing programme. For further information, see March 18, 2010, article - Scotland Awards 1.2 Gigawatts of Marine Energy Projects.

IIR's Renewable Energy Database provides extensive coverage on the wind energy, geothermal, hydroelectric, landfill gas-to-energy and utility-scale solar power plants throughout North America, and is now expanding coverage across the world.

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