The partnership’s lease agreement allows them to develop the area for the proposed deployment of the first commercial farm of Aquamarine Power’s Oyster hydro-lectric wave power devices in 2013. The partnership will now work closely with The Crown Estate, Orkney Islands Council and other key stakeholders to obtain necessary consents for the phased deployment of the farm.
The development area has the potential to allow Oyster devices to be deployed in small clusters spaced over a stretch of coastline off mainland Orkney running from Costa Head in the north to Neban Point in the south-west. The proposed wave farm would have an installed capacity of 200MW.
Today’s announcement was made by The Crown Estate as part of its Pentland Firth and Orkney Waters leasing round, which opened in November 2008 and attracted over 40 bids for seabed leases from 20 marine energy developers and utilities.
The partnership between Aquamarine Power and SSE Renewables is part of an agreement between the two companies to develop up to 1GW of Oyster wave farm sites in the UK and Ireland by 2020 – the largest commercial agreement in the wave energy sector to date.
