Sustainable Marine Energy’s (SME) PLAT-O has become the first tidal energy system to generate power off the south coast of England near to Yarmouth and in doing so, SME has demonstrated that the cost of tidal energy is rapidly coming down with systems like PLAT-O coming on stream.
As reported in November, PLAT-O was launched from the company’s facility in Venture Quays, East Cowes and towed to the test site at Yarmouth. Once at the site PLAT-O was submerged to installation depth and a series of tests were run.
Since then further tests have been run showing increasing confidence in the potential for tidal streams to provide a commercially viable source of renewable energy.
Jason Hayman, Managing Director of SME, said:
“It’s a huge achievement for the team. PLAT-O has been generating power consistently, reliably and, most importantly has behaved as we predicted it would. The mooring solution we have developed and employed is as steady as a rock. The installation operation went very smoothly and it absolutely goes to show that tidal energy devices can be installed in a low cost and efficient manner.
“Developing systems and deploying them in these strong tidal flows is a massive challenge but we have nailed it. The cost of tidal energy is coming down rapidly with systems like PLAT-O coming on stream.”
Matt Slatter, Chairman of SME, said:
“It has been a very busy and very exciting time for the team at SME. The completion of our testing programme in the Solent is a major milestone and the culmination of three years of hard work. PLAT-O has lived up to expectations and we are now focusing on the deployment of PLAT-O at the European Marine Energy Centre and the build of the second PLAT-O. With the support of Scottish Enterprise, we are building the team to deliver a farm of PLAT-O systems generating up to 1MW of power at EMEC by the end of 2016.”
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