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Strangford Lough joins sustainable energy race
by George Mojo
07/06/2007:// It's been confirmed that installation of a commercial tidal energy system at Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland will start during August.
At 1.2MW capacity, SeaGen will be the world's largest ever tidal current device by a significant margin, and will generate clean and sustainable electricity for approximately 1000 homes.
It is also a world first in being a prototype for commercial technology to be replicated on a large scale over the next few years.
The installation of SeaGen in Strangford Lough will be carried out by A2SEA A/S of Denmark, one of Europe's leading offshore installation contractors. The SeaGen 1.2MW commercial demonstrator has been developed on the basis of the turbine installed by Marine Current Turbines Ltd off Lynmouth,in Devon, in 2003.
It has taken the subsequent four years for Marine Current Turbines to design and build SeaGen and secure the necessary environmental and planning consents.
SeaGen is a commercial demonstration project with permission to operate in Strangford Lough for a period of up to 5 years.
It is intended as the prototype for commercial applications of the technology that will follow.
Martin Wright, Managing Director of Marine Current Turbines said: "SeaGen's installation is a very significant milestone for both Marine Current Turbines and the emerging marine energy sector.
Following from our previous experience with SeaFlow, our 300kW experimental test system installed in 2003 off the north Devon coast, we are confident that SeaGen will show that tidal energy can be truly competitive with other forms of power generation. Decentralised tidal current energy is fundamentally predictable and sustainable. It is also environmentally benign."
MCT has undertaken a comprehensive environmental monitoring programme. This programme is already active and is managed by Royal Haskoning, a leading environmental consultancy, working in partnership with Queen's University Belfast and the St Andrews University Sea Mammals Research Unit.
The programme is overseen by an independent body, chaired by David Erwin, a former Chief Executive of the Ulster Wildlife Trust.
The A2SEA jack-up barge, "jumping Jack", is planning to mobilise from Belfast's Harland & Wolf shipyard, where SeaGen is already complete and waiting, to Strangford Lough on August 20th.
It is expected that the drilling of a single pile into the seabed and the installation of the twin-turbine device will take 14 days, with commissioning and power generation to the local grid shortly afterwards.
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