Oceanflow Development Limited has secured a 7 year lease from The Crown Estate on an area of seabed in Sanda Sound, South Kintyre. The lease will allow Oceanflow to deploy and test its Evopod™ floating tethered tidal stream turbine at the site from 2013.
Graeme Mackie, Oceanflow’s Managing Director , said:
“Obtaining access to the Sanda Sound test site from The Crown Estate will allow us to test our ¼ scale grid connected unit in a harsh open sea environment so that we can demonstrate the potential of full scale Evopod™ semi-submerged turbines for exposed sea areas such as the Pentland Firth. Oceanflow believes that floating tethered turbines will be cheaper to install and to operate than seabed mounted devices and the tests in Sanda Sound will help demonstrate the potential of this technology to exploit Scotland’s extensive tidal stream resource which is mainly in the deeper water exposed sites.”
Oceanflow Development, the Scottish subsidiary of Oceanflow Energy, intends to use the Sanda Sound site for long term testing of its Evopod™ tidal stream turbine. The sub-50kW test device, which is being deployed with Scottish Enterprise WATERS funding support, will be grid connected and could be a forerunner to other community energy scale tidal power projects around the coastline of Scotland.
Oceanflow is currently looking for a large industrial partner and this search is led by the London based Merchant Bank Turquoise International.
[mappress]
Press release, February 5, 2013; Image: oceanflowenergy