MCT secures funds to enhance SeaGen
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Marine Current Turbines (MCT) has secured £2.7m in funding from the Carbon Trust’s Marine Renew ables Proving Fund (MRPF) to support the enhancement of SeaGen, a megawatt-scale grid-connected tidal current energy system.
’The Carbon Trust funding will be used to assess SeaGen’s operation, our engineering processes, construction and installation techniques and assist us in reviewing and evaluating a range of other important issues,’ said Martin Wright, managing director of MCT.
MCT aims to deploy its first tidal farm in UK waters during 2012. The company has partnered with RWE npower renewables to develop a 10MW tidal farm off Anglesey and in Canada is working with Minas Bay Pulp and Paper to deploy a single SeaGen device in the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia, during 2011.
The company installed the world’s first offshore tidal turbine near Lynmouth off the coast of Devon in May 2003 and completed installation and commissioning of the 1.2MW SeaGen system in Strangford Narrows, Northern Ireland, in 2008.
Readers' comments (2)
David Cutter | 8 Feb 2010 3:05 pm
Could one or more of those structures also hold a windmill? They might not be ideally sited but would take advantage of the large investment in cabling to on-shore facility and junction to the grid. The structure would need to be stronger but sharing the other facilities should reduce overall cost.
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Peter Field | 8 Feb 2010 5:21 pm
The letter above indicates that if "the man in the street" can make such a sensible suggestion, why does it need £2.7m of tax-payers money to fund suggestions and tests that MCT could have made themselves! And why, since SeaGen was commissioned in 2008, do we not yet have detailed demonstrated test results giving outputs and load factor and anticipated costs per kWh? It's lack of information that creates scepticism.
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