The hub of a power revolution

The developer of a planned wave power farm in Cornwall has named a trio of renewable energy specialists whose technology will underpin the £15m project.

The three companies will provide the energy generation systems at the core of the first phase of Wave Hub, which aims to deliver electricity to the national grid via an ‘offshore power socket’ located 10 miles from the Cornish coast.

Large-scale tests

The South West RDA (SWRDA), which is behind the initiative, said Ocean Power Technologies (OPT), Ocean Prospect and Fred Olsen, would each carry out large-scale testing at the Wave Hub site during the next year.

SWRDA said each had developed ‘very different technologies’, but all had reached a sufficiently advanced stage to be involved in the ambitious project.

Wave Hub will mark a UK debut for OPT, the world’s first publicly-listed wave power company.

Its wave energy systems are based on modular, buoy-like structures called PowerBuoys. These are intelligent devices which are capable of responding to different conditions. Submerged a metre or more beneath the water, a piston-based system within each unit is moved through the rise and fall of the waves, driving a generator on the sea bed that produces electricity for transmission to the shore via a standard small-diameter submarine cable.