Irish company to test tidal energy turbine

Irish company OpenHydro is to become the first renewable energy company to test a tidal turbine at the European Marine Energy Centre (Emec) in the Orkney Islands.

Emec is already the first centre in the world to test wave energy machines in "live", grid-connected conditions, and its new tidal testing operations were unveiled by Scottish first minister Alex Salmond last Friday.

OpenHydro designs and manufactures marine turbines which are used to generate renewable energy from deep-sea tidal currents. It is chaired by Brendan Gilmore and directors include Philip Lynch of utilities company One51 and Gerry Byrne, dean of engineering at UCD.

The company was awarded almost €2 million in grant support from the Scottish executive, towards the costs of the testing programme which involves a turbine anchored on the seabed in depths of up to 50m.

Tidal energy machines differ from wave energy collectors in that they operate far below the surface where they pose no difficulty for navigation. Rising and falling tides and currents move the turbine which is connected by undersea cable to a station on shore. Wave energy connectors tend to float on the surface extracting energy from the movement of the waves.

To date, the British government and other UK public sector organisations have invested about €23 million in the creation of Emec and its two marine laboratories.

The aim is to capitalise on Scotland's marine resources which include deep water with an uninterrupted stretch of sea between Scotland and the east coast of north America. Marine energy, created by gravitational pulls from the sun and the moon, is completely renewable.

The UK department of trade and industry is hoping the centre will not just prove the viability of renewable marine-sourced energy, but allow Britain to become a world leader in supplying marine technology. A number of "Pelamis" wave energy converters developed by Edinburgh-based Ocean Power Delivery, and tested in the Orkneys, have already been sold to Portugal, in addition to UK based electricity suppliers.

A UK department of industry spokesman said just a few countries including Portugal and Ireland had the potential to rival Scotland's marine and wind energy resources.