WHERE people have talked for many years about the potential for the sea to one day substantially replace fossil fuels as our main source of electricity, making it happen has proved more challenging.
While wave power looked more promising in the early years, now tidal is considered to be two or three years in front. The current leader looks to be Norway's Hammerfest Strom, whose HS1000 1MW device, currently testing in Orkney, has been commissioned by Scottish Power to form the first array in the world with 10 turbines off Islay. Although it is said to have encountered some costly installation problems this year during device tests, it is due to go into construction next year.
It is one of four projects named by the Scottish Government last month as "finalists" in the Saltire Prize, which will award £10 million to the company that achieves the greatest amount of electrical output over a continuous two-year period. Behind it comes MeyGen, also focused on tidal and owned by a consortium that includes Australian developer, Atlantis Resources. MeyGen is building an array off Caithness that will also begin next year.
The other two projects belong to Scottish wave developers Pelamis and Aquamarine, respectively off Sutherland and Lewis.
Behind this leading pack are various others, including tidal players Marine Current Turbines and Rolls-Royce-owned TGL, and Pelamis, which will provide turbines for developments by Scottish Power, E.ON and Vattenfall off Orkney and Shetland. Others to watch include Orkney's own ScotRenewables, with a tidal device.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article