London (Platts)--27Oct2010/753 am EDT/1153 GMT
The MeyGen consortium, which groups UK-based independent power producer International Power, investment bank Morgan Stanley and tidal power technology developer Atlantis Resources, has agreed a lease with the UK's Crown Estate for the installation of a tidal current power plant in the Pentland Firth, off northern Scotland, the partners said Wednesday. Under the agreement with the Crown Estate, which owns, manages and leases the UK seabed, MeyGen will have an exclusive right to develop the Inner Sound tidal project and take up a 25-year operational lease for the project, which would have a capacity of up to 400 MW. The project is still subject to regulatory approvals and planning consent, but MeyGen said it aims to build it in stages from when planning consent is granted up until 2020. As a first step it would install a limited turbine array to assess the environmental impact of the tidal turbines and inform the detailed planning for future phases. Technology from both shareholder Atlantis and up to 10 MW of capacity from TGL Rolls-Royce would be installed during the demonstration phase. MeyGen said the Inner Sound is the "crown jewel" of the Pentland Firth "due to the quality of the tidal resource and its proximity to the mainland for grid connection points." And the wider Pentland Firth and waters off the nearby Orkney islands boast some of the best conditions in the world for tidal stream generation. These were the first areas to be made available for commercial scale development of wave and tidal energy in the UK. The Crown Estate has already licensed 10 other projects in the Pentland Firth/Orkney Islands with a potential generating capacity of up to 1.6 GW, making its first marine energy round the largest planned development of marine energy in the world. The Crown Estate had been been due to license the Inner Sound as part of that process, but had to relicense it after the preferred bidder pulled out before the winning bidders for the round were awarded in March. The Inner Sound license covers around 3.3 square kilometers with high water flows between the Scottish mainland and the island of Stroma. Meygen, which aims to install up to 400 turbines similar to its turbine already being tested by Atlantis at the European Marine Energy Center in Orkney, said the license from the Crown Estate followed two years of preparatory work. The consortium is 45% owned by International Power, 45% by Morgan Stanley and 10% by Atlantis Resources. Tidal current uses the inward and outward flows of the tide to drive subsea turbines fixed to the seabed that are similar in function to wind turbines, and is a completely different technology to more traditional tidal power generation that involves building barrages across an estuary or similar body of water. --Paul Whitehead, paul_whitehead@platts.com Similar stories appear in Renewable Energy Report See more information at http://www.platts.com/Products/renewableenergyreport/