STW: font of all knowledge: Tidal power

Swansea Bay barrage

Isn’t a barrage, it’s a tidal lagoon and would have sod all impact on migrating birds. Same as the one proposed in N Wales.

If there was some big oil conspiracy to kill off the wave/tidal power technology then the same thing would have happened to offshore wind. They haven’t.

Floating offshore wind will make wave/tidal even more unattractive as an investment.

Some bold claims being made by someone who read about it on the internet but with zero experiance operating in that environment….

For those that haven’t read it I’d heartily recommend Without Hot Air, it was linked on the previous page. I’d also recommend Renewable Energy by Stephen Peake if you can find it. I have a pre-publication version of the latest edition if anyone would like it as well as an older edition (but I would warn that the older one has been vastly updated though still largely relevant) as well as the old edition of Energy Systems and Sustainability.

At this point I should point out that wave and tidal are two very different beasts. Tidal is lunar and predictable, wave is solar and far less so.

The tories intend Scotland to be dependent on english electricity. Thats why Scotland has not been allowed to have any investment nor now has no blackstart capacity

We do have black start but thats reliant on Cruachan spinning up, connecting to Peterhead and it subsequently firing up. Obviously this is a hail Mary rather than a proper plan.

Surely if the tide is even just partially held back the turbines never need to stop turning?

Tidal flows tend towards being sinusoidal – there is a period of peak flow around half tide, followed by periods of not-much-happening inbetween. The turbines could be turning, but they won’t be doing much around slack water.

Salt water is a horrible environment for moving machinery. I imagine the technical challenges (and costs) are considerable.

That would be my intuition as well

I know everyone is going full itat the government fault but are there any installations else where In The world of a good size? How are they doing?

Tidal fkow runni g in Aus iirc. Trial but at conmercial scale

The proposed tidal power scheme in the Severn Estuary has popped up in Private Eye several times over the last few years. I can’t remember the exact details, but I think that there was an insinuation that there may have been some improper lobbying.

There is a large scheme being planned for the Isle of Wight that appears to have been granted planning permission /government approval

https://www.iow.gov.uk/Residents/Environment-Planning-and-Waste/Future-Energy-Initiatives/Solent-Ocean-Energy-Centre-SOEC/Background

And

Home

Tidal lagoons at commercial scale working as wellfrom memory in France

Why is it few is any of them get beyond *trial* at what ever scale …..

-and none of the conspiracy nonsense – facts only please.

If I had a penny for every time I’ve seen a new “tidal is the future company” on the news …. I’d have about 1.62.

Yet the active projects are minimal in comparison to the trials.

Lack of investment the french tidal one ( think it France) is commercial scale.

Strangford lough ran for a longntime

Its lack of political will thats the main issue and few countries have the right conditions for tidal flow. Scotland is rare in that it does.

10% of uk power neefs possible is the low estimate from a aceptic. Thats got to be worth having

We get a new bit of ‘trial’ kit dropped into Milford Haven or Ramsey Sound every few years here.
Local kids get a school trip and the local paper has a photo of them next to a tidal turbine/wave generator/magic buoy on the dock.
Then…nothing. The new office closes, the 100s of ‘good jobs’ don’t appear and we carry on being a county in the thrall of our oil refinery. Strange that: life in Pembrokeshire I guess.

I nearly wrapped my sea kayak around a very large yellow ‘minion’ buoy in Ramsay Sound earlier this year. The energy in a tidal flow is staggering and terrifying. Harnessing it isn’t easy but it seems so necessary these days.

EDIT: Exhibit A: https://www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/news/19752527.biggest-investment-generation-tidal-power-welcomed/

Exhibit B: https://www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/news/10834134.public-exhibition-reveals-plans-for-tidal-energy-device-at-ramsey-sound/

<sigh> C: https://www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/news/14819668.buyer-sought-as-tidal-energy-company-goes-into-administration/

Is it chancers, politicians or NIMBYS that kill these?

EDIT EDIT: honestly I’ve had to stop. Google ‘“western telegraph” tidal’ and see pages and pages of results. It’s depressing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rance_Tidal_Power_Station

So it’s tidal barrages your proposing rather than stand alone tidal generators that have been going to trial and failing* to commercialise.

That would fit in with your assertion that it’s proven technology rather than the constantly in development currently.tidal generators.

How ever the environmental issues associated with tidal barrages are not so easy to get around

No i prefer tidal fliw for the reasons you state.

Tech is stll available and ready to go. How long was strangford lough running for?

Yes tbe seas off Scotland make installation and maintenance difficult.

The fact remains that tidal has had miniscule investment compared to nuclear but has the potential to generate much mre cheaply

Iirc there are tidal flow setups in place as well

Why is it few is any of them get beyond *trial* at what ever scale

That’s what I can’t help thinking. Me thinks complicated thing is complicated and there is no world conspiracy.

Some projects fail technically but most die for lack of investment. See pelarmis wave generation for a classic example. Killed off by an oil company who invested then dumped

When I was at university 25yrs ago studying marine science, wind and tidal power was a big topic, offshore wind was barely mentioned.

No one is denying the energy resource is there but as mentioned above, wave and tidal have both consistently failed to bridge the valley of death.

I may be biased as I’ve just started a job working in offshore wind development but that’s where all the money is going.

Are you sure about that.

https://www.emec.org.uk/about-us/wave-clients/pelamis-wave-power/

For a technology to be successfully industrialised it has to be scaleable and replicable. One off implementations are staggeringly expensive. Offshore wind is successful as there are a few different types of turbine and footing, but they can be used in a variety of situations with small modifications to limited parts. Tidal is site specific and so requires huge, almost complete redesign for every situation. Coupled to the environmental surveys, you can imagine the costs being similar to those of building a nuclear plant.

Yes jambo. Ive been following pelarmis in detail as they are local to me. They started to scale up for production. Took over a site in leith docks then the oil co pulled the funding. I also know folk who worked for them. Yes a small remnant was saved but that production facility remains empty

So, as far as I can tell, pelamis IP is owned by wave energy Scotland, a government agency, and the hardware is owned by Orkney council.

Where does the big oil conspiracy come into this? I’m genuinely curious?

2014

One of the big oil companies took a large stake. Promised huge funding then renaged on it. This was as pelarmis was scaling up for commercial levels of production.

Scots government saved what they could from the wreckage which is what is left now

I dont think conspiracy btw. It was a commercial decision based on cost cutting by the oil co due to falling ( not rising as i said earlier) oil prices

If it was viable, why didn’t someone else step in?

The Strangford one spent quite a lot of its life like it is in your photo. Tides through the Strangford narrows are sort of like a lagoon, plenty of flow and quite a distinct slack water. There is a floating test bed/research rig now in place on the Portaferry side.

Friend of mine works here
https://www.sustainablemarine.com/
Seem busy

It was a commercial decision based on cost cutting by the oil co due to falling ( not rising as i said earlier) oil prices

Strange decision to make in 2014 having been invested in it for 12 years through out the major financial crash and subsequent oil crash to remain in for a further 6 years prior to declining to enter the next round of funding suggests it’s slightly different in the real world to your conjecture on events.

(Just looked at the investment rounds to determine who the oil co was )

Swansea lagoon

It seems there’s another attempt to get the Swansea tidal lagoon up and running

Trailrat. I think the issue was funding needed to be scaled up significantly and the oil co was cost cutting.

But im at the limit of what i know

I was using pelarmis as an exampme of why these companies need long term government funding not short term. Its an example of how investment decions can be devastating

Twodogs – so that’s another attempt by mark shorrock and his wife, julie davenport, to keep this alive when it’s a commercial non-starter.
He owns a quarry in Cornwall which would supply the stone/rock armour required for the breakwater but the parish council which covers the quarry rejected his proposal to them as it, effectively, attempted to strong-arm them into supporting his extraction plans.
He’s persistent and knows massive profit combined with low risk when he sees it.
He’s been pushing this and similar schemes – unsuccessfully – for years.

There is no conspiracy theory about tidal power generation.

It’s quite simply an incredibly difficult environment.

Anyone with any knowledge of subsea and offshore construction would understand that.

Once the current speed exceeds 3 knots most operations are untenable, which means that the working windows are very short.

Never mind installing and maintaining the turbines, just trying laying the export and array cables in the Pentland Firth.

But if you want to think it’s an anti-Scottish, Tory, oil & gas agenda, then go ahead.

I have worked in marine energy development for many years, O&G, wave, tidal and wind, this thread is devoid of facts 😉

You can find interesting information by reading for example renewable industry news websites, not random newspaper or anti-renewable websites. Probably some good videos on youtube again if they come from the industry, not random accumulated content clickbait nonsense. I’m sure there was a good one about Henrik Stiesdal and the story of wind power through to offshore wind over the decades but I couldn’t find it on a quick search.

Many companies have tried to make tidal stream power work all around the world, it’s still essentially a new/unproven technology so reliant on funding from private and public sectors, however with poor government support it is not a desirable thing to invest in so many companies simply lose funding after a few years or don’t get enough to make good progress. Working offshore apart from being technically challenging is incredibly expensive, the vessel costs are eye watering, some of the big WTG installation vessels we use are hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. Even if the technology was proven it takes many,many years to pay off the devex and capex costs and actually start making money, so proven technology and government support are needed, to simplify the financial challenge side a bit. Floating wind will open up a new set of financial viability challenges for the industry.

The Meygen tidal power development off the north of Scotland has been operating for a few years but I think this year they’ve had problems with some of the generators and have been having to try to raise money just to get them installed on site again after repair. The Orbital device gets around a lot of the issues of fixing them to the seabed but has to deal with issues like waves as it is on the surface.

If you want to learn about the environmental impacts the EIAs for some developments should be available online. Pelamis wasn’t killed by oil companies or the tories and there is no conspiracy.

It’s quite simply an incredibly difficult environment

This.

Placing anything underwater is complex, placing something under the sea is even more so. Putting turbines, generators, power systems etc underwater and expecting them to work day in day out for years on end is really difficult. High initial cost, durability, maintenance issues and operation costs that result tend to be the real killers so no conspiracies there, unfortunately its just engineering and economics tbh.

Rance near St Malo is basically a estuary tidal dam (works very well BTW) and crucially the turbines are able to be isolated by sluice gates and easily accessible for maintenance. Trying to do this at scale in open sea/open water is really tough which is why a whole slew of open water/ocean turbine generators have tended to stay as proof of concept experiments. Barrage/dam based systems are much better in this respect but something very big such as the proposed Severn barrage has a lot of downsides, not least the initial high cost, issues with ships having to access Bristol and Newport docks and having to mitigate flood surges from the Severn and Wye rivers. Not impossible but definately not straightforward or easy to do…

However, building and operating a large offshore wind farm is a piece of cake in comparison

I’d say the comparison with nuclear (and hydro) is very fair, similarly large up front costs and a long payback term, IIRC the Galloway hydro scheme took something like 50 years to pay for itself.

Tech is stll available and ready to go.

I wouldn’t say so for reasons already highlighted. If it is ever to get off the ground it’s going to take a major goverenment stake as any commercial operation is going to run a mile. Couple that with our terrible grid charging system and that’s why these things never get past the testing stage, they’re just not commercially viable.

I never said there was a conspiracy. Its just the aims of the oil companies and Westminster are incompatible with providing the long term funding tnese projects need.

SNP are not much better but they simply are unable to access the funding. There was an attempt to raise funding via issuing bonds a decade ago ( for a variety of infrastructure projects) that was killed by Westminster

Cock up not conspiracy

Its very telling that i get accused of making statements i have not. Its almost as if thete is no logical way of refuting

tjagain
Full Member

An oil co. killed pelarmis.

Posted 19 hours ago

You wrote that which both a direct quote and is factually incorrect. The market forces killed it. It just so happened an oil company was able to provide the significant backing to get it moving. If there was a viable commercial case then they would still be in that market. It’s in their interest to divest massively from oil both politically and financially

Yes i said that now read it again in context. Its factual. I do not say conspiracy. The oil co was looking to make short term savings and pulled the funding thus killing the company.

Its very telling that i get accused of making statements i have not.

Statements like this suggests that you are claiming a conspiracy:

tories do not want Scotland to have surplus to export. Its pure politics.

And :

the totally rigged fake market which means ridiculously high cost to access the grid if you generate electricity in Scotland

“Totally rigged fake market” suggests a conspiracy surely – what is your definition of rigged and fake?