Wave energy was once talked up as the next
big thing- and something the UK could excel at. It had the best wave resource-
much of it off Scotland. And it had the technological lead, with Stephen Salter’s
pioneering ‘Nodding Duck’, Wavegen’s success with prototype shore-line devices, and some
government support- all then crowned by the apparently world beating Pelamis ‘wave
snake’ and Oyster ‘hinged clam’ devices.
To
move things along, the UK invested heavily in full-scale ‘open-sea’ test
facilities, including EMEC in Scotland (opened in 2004) and WaveHub (established
in 2010) in Cornwall and device teams from around the world were invited the UK
to test their ideas. These sites include dock facilities and electricity grid
connections. EMEC also offered ‘nursery’ sites (e.g. EMEC’s Scapa Flow) for
testing of earlier stage, part-scale prototypes in less hostile conditions.
WaveHub partnered with FabTest, a nursery test site situated near Falmouth. All
seemed set for accelerated development. There was talk of a 10% or even 20% UK
electricity contribution, ultimately…
However,
things did not go to plan. Indeed, the plans seem to have been faulty. As novel
technologies, the wave devices all needed financial support to get established-
R&D funding initially and then some form of market enablement backing. But what was offered was not enough and was poorly
targeted, with regularly shifting targets. A new
report on the UK wave energy programme from Imperial College and
Strathclyde University notes how multiple attempts were made to provide
support, but none succeeded due to the poor design of the support schemes. They
were overly concerned with limiting the expenditure and getting costs down
quickly.
Those with long memories may recall the spat that
occurred in the 1980s when the incoming Conservative government cut R&D
funding for wave energy and its later reinstatement by a Labour administration.
More recently, it has been the handling of the market enablement programme that
has led to significant problems. A case
in point is the Marine Renewables Deployment Fund (MRDF) which, from 2004, offered
£42m for tidal current turbine and wave energy projects. However, it required
projects to have proven themselves at sea at commercial scale for 3 months. No
one was likely to build something speculatively in the hope of obtaining
funding later! None tried. Only MCT’s Seagen tidal project made it through to
the 2ROC/MWh of operational support then being offered to tidal current and
wave projects under the Renewables
Obligation- and MCT didn’t use the MRDF. No wave projects got through.
In
2008, the Renewables Advisory Board rather lamely said ‘The MRDF is
fundamentally a sound scheme. It, in
itself, is not a failure, but the R&D process has failed to supply the
technologies that the MRDF was established to support.’ So the scheme was fine but the technology
wasn’t ready! As a bit of a botch,
the government did then introduce an
interim £22m Marine Renewables Proving Fund,
to make projects viable for the MRDF, but that too failed to attract any
takers.
The current situation is not much better. Wave and
tidal stream projects are eligible for CfD support, and were even guaranteed a
protected 100MW tranche @ £305/MWh in the first CfD round, but none were able
to take this up and the protected slot was removed in the second CfD round.
Tidal steam projects, like the big Meygen scheme in Pentland Firth, have gone
ahead with their own money, EU support and/or demonstration grants, but wave
energy mostly trails behind at the R& D stage, with funding being cut back.
Although, in 2013, the Scottish government offered £13m in support for two
larger projects, they didn’t go ahead, with Pelamis and Oyster both going bust.
The Scottish government rescued some of the staff, setting up a residual
programme, but at present the focus is on R&D and small system testing and
development. Some of this looks promising e.g.: the 1MW Wello Penguin on test
at the Orkney EMEC site, with EU funding: http://tidalenergytoday.com/2017/04/07/penguin-wave-device-powers-uk-grid/
However, overall, although new ideas continue to emerge, costs are still
high, R&D funding is falling, further EU funding for UK work looks
uncertain after BREXIT, and the prospects for the immediate future in the UK do
not look good- although the EU does have a continuing programme.
Could it have been done better? Given the harsh
maritime environment, the technology has proved hard to develop, with several
very visible disasters (e.g. the sinking of the 2MW Osprey in a storm off
Scotland in 1995) and costs have remained high. But in theory, a properly
funded programme might have helped things move along more successfully– if the
focus had not always been on getting to low costs quickly. There is a new CfD
round planned for 2019 with ‘less
established technologies’ being eligible. It seems unlikely, but wave energy might be one of them, despite the high
cost.
Would it be worth it? Well, the UK wave energy
resource is very large, with the winds that blow over the Atlantic creating
huge swells. The resultant wave energy,
in effect stored wind energy, persists for some while after the winds have died
down, so using it avoids some of the variability problems of wind. But it may
take more time to develop viable extraction technologies. Tidal stream systems, operating on the
regular back and forth tidal ebbs and flows in the relatively calm undersea
environment, are easier options, although the tidal steam resource may not be
as large as that for wave energy. Though for the moment, that’s where most
effort in the marine renewables field in the UK and elsewhere is focussed,
along with growing interest in tidal
lagoons. There are some surviving tethered buoy-type wave projects around the
word (e.g. OPT in the USA and CETO in Australia), and some in the UK (e.g.
Seatricity and Searaser) and more may emerge. However, while niche markets may
exist for small wave projects in remote locations, and wave energy development is
far from dead in the water, for now, with budgets tight, sadly the full, vast,
global wave resource seems beyond capture on any significant scale.
‘Lost at Sea or a new wave of innovation?’ https://strathcloud.sharefile.eu/app?/
- /share/view/sfa07a0e490740cea
Some wave technology hopefuls:
Seatricty: http://seatricity.com/ (UK)
CETO: http://www.carnegiece.com/wave/
(Australia)
