Scots warm to power of the sea
By Ian Fraser
Published: The Sunday Times
Date: March 27th, 2011
Keith Anderson, of Scottish Power Renewables, is aiming to become a leader in offshore wind turbines
Not content with having outpaced his rivals in wind energy, Keith Anderson wants to conquer the waves.
Scottish Power Renewables, based in Glasgow, is the largest renewable energy supplier in the country, with an installed capacity of 1,000MW at its onshore wind farms.
It owns and operates Europe’s largest single wind farm — the 140-turbine Whitelee project near Glasgow, capable of generating 322MW — but in recent years the Spanish-owned company has increasingly been turning its gaze seawards.
As chief executive, Anderson stresses that developments on land have not run into a wall. It’s just that there remain considerable barriers to building more large wind farms onshsore, including difficulties in obtaining planning consent.
Meanwhile, recent improvements in offshore renewables technology — including huge turbines with a generating capacity of 7MW each — have made building wind farms at sea far more attractive.
“There is huge potential in offshore wind power. Our goal is to become involved early, to understand the technologies and, most important, to understand where the best sites are,” said Anderson. “We are a developer of projects and our intellectual property lies in identifying the best places to build.”
Acquired by Iberdrola Renovables, the world’s largest renewable energy company, in March 2007, Scottish Power Renewables wants to get a lead in offshore wind, as it did in onshore farms 18 years ago.
Last year Iberdrola committed itself to investing €9 billion (£8.1 billion) in developing renewable electricity generation between 2010 and 2012, including €1.9 billion in the UK — much of it likely to go into offshore developments.
The biggest initiative in the pipeline is a 7,200MW project off the East Anglian coast, which the company is developing with the Swedish utility Vattenfall. Together, the companies secured permission for the scheme during the Crown Estate’s third licensing round for offshore wind energy projects. It will cover 6,000 sq km of sea and generate as much electricity as three large coal-fired power stations, enough for 5m homes.
Anderson said the third licensing round, announced in January 2010, was a watershed. “Overnight the government and Crown Estate created a 25GW offshore wind turbine market.”
He believes that having missed the boat for onshore wind turbine manufacturing, the government is determined not to fail again. “The round three process was designed to create a British market large enough to attract investment into this country.”
Even though tidal power is at an earlier stage of development than offshore wind, Anderson believes that Britain has an opportunity to become a global leader in the sector, partly because British waters have one quarter of northern Europe’s tidal currents.
He believes that if the government gets it right, Britain could become the world’s centre of excellence for tidal power technology and manufacturing.
“Our view is get involved early … but more importantly to understand where the best sites are. Scottish Power’s priority is to identify sites that are suitable for big projects — where dependable tidal currents can be harnessed to create a substantial industry.”
Three years ago the company identified the strait between the Hebridean islands of Islay and Jura as ticking the right boxes, partly because of the consistency of the tidal stream and access to the national grid. On March 17 it secured planning permission for a “pre-commercial” £40m, 10MW project that will be capable of generating sufficient power for Islay’s homes and its eight whisky distilleries.
Scottish Power will install ten 1MW seabed tidal turbines from Norway’s Hammerfest Strom. A one-third scale prototype has been installed in the floor of the Kvalsundet fjord since 2003. “We have a lot of confidence in the ability of that technology to work and to withstand the environment,” said Anderson. “We are working with Hammerfest on scaling up the technology.”
Anderson admits that even with generous subsidies — currently three renewable obligation certificates (ROCs) per megawatt for tidal power — the Islay project is unlikely to make any money. However, he sees the project, due to be commissioned in 2013, as a precursor to larger commercial schemes elsewhere in Scotland.
“The aim of Islay … is to demonstrate how these machines work together, how they interact on the sea bed, and how they link into the grid. You won’t get to the true commercial reality of tidal power until you get to the next step, which is our project for the Ness of Duncansby,” he said.
That 95MW project will see arrays of up to 20 turbines concreted into the Pentland Firth between Caithness and Orkney from 2015.
Anderson added: “Once you have got to that level, you can make more realistic cost comparisons with other forms of generation.”
Wave power, seen as technologically and commercially more advanced than tidal power until about three years ago, has been leapfrogged.
However, this has not dented Scottish Power’s enthusiasm for the sector. The company will install a 750kW “sea snake” device, developed by the Leith-based wave power manufacturer Pelamis, at the European Marine Energy Centre off the coast of Orkney later this year. “We see wave energy as another area of huge potential,” said Anderson.
He declined to say whether the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan might provide a further fillip for renewable energy — by slowing the programme of replacing Britain’s ageing nuclear reactors.
However, he believes that the government’s goals for reducing carbon dioxide emissions are already quite stretching. “The UK and EU targets are already very, very ambitious — while remaining realistic. It would be difficult to see how they could be made any more ambitious than they are now.”
This article was published in The Sunday Times on March 27th, 2011. View on Sunday Times website
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