Marine Energy Device Developers News

Garrad Hassan helps Chilean government to identify marine energy project sites - 11th Mar 2009

Garrad Hassan recently presented initial findings from its study to identify Chile's potential for wave and tidal energy projects to the Chilean government.

The worldwide renewable energy consultancy has been working with the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), under the Sustainable Energy and Climate Change (SECCI) initiative, to identify priority areas for the development of marine energy projects in Chile.

Initial findings from the study estimate Chile’s raw offshore wave power at 164GW - about 12 times the total capacity of the electrical system in Chile. The Chacao Channel was found to have the largest potential for exploitation of tidal currents, estimated at up to 500MW.

João Cruz, Garrad Hassan’s wave energy expert said “While these are early findings, and there are several levels of further work to undertake before embarking on a commercial project, they place Chile comparatively high among the other geographic regions that have conducted similar assessments of their raw wave and tidal capacity”.

Proposed further stages of the study include ongoing data collection and analysis of sites, identifying and promoting technologies, and developing demonstration projects.

Chilean Government Minister of Energy, Marcelo Tokman, explained that conducting research into the best prospective locations at this relatively early stage in the marine renewables sector meant that, when the technology became more advanced, Chile would be in a strong competitive position. When talking about the raw marine power identified, he also described Chile as “the Saudi Arabia of Marine Energy”.

Joao Cruz joins Garrad Hassan Marine Renewables Team - 28th Nov 2007

In January 2008 Joao Cruz will join Garrad Hassan (GH), where he will lead wave energy activities within the GH Marine Renewables Group.

Joao’s experience with research institutes and technology developers around Europe will further strengthen GH’s capabilities in the rapidly developing wave energy sector. Joao is well known in the wave energy industry with previous connections to IST-Technical University of Lisbon, The University of Edinburgh, Teamwork Technology (Archimedes Wave Swing) and more recently Pelamis Wave Power Ltd, where he was an active member of the Cost Reduction and Performance Enhancement Department. Joao’s expertise spans across resource assessment, numerical and experimental modelling of wave energy converters and development of tools in an operational environment. Joao brings with him a unique combination of R&D and field experience obtained in Portugal and in the UK at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC). Recently Joao also edited a book entitled ‘Ocean Wave Energy’ (Springer-Verlag) which is one of the first textbooks in the field.

Robert Rawlinson-Smith, leader of the GH Marine Renewables Group, commented
‘Joao’s arrival clearly demonstrates GH’s aim to become a world leader in the provision of engineering consultancy services to the wave energy sector.‘

GH to provide prototype controller for tidal turbine - 19th Jun 2007

GH will undertake the design and implementation of the control system for Tidal Generation Limited’s (TGL) 500kW prototype tidal turbine.

The work, supported by the DTI Technology Programme, will build on experience developed by GH in the wind sector where the company GH has been responsible for the design and implementation of a large number of prototype control systems.

This project will be the second control design and implementation that GH undertakes in the marine renewables sector, GH having already been selected by Rotech to supply the prototype control system for Lunar Energy’s RTT turbine.

GH is well equipped to meet the challenges of providing robust, high quality control systems in this new field of renewable energy. Tony Mercer, Principal Control Engineer at GH explains ‘GH has developed a unique capability to provide innovative control systems deployable on a range of different hardware platforms backed up with state of the art hardware and software testing tools' The Lunar Energy and TGL prototype turbines are to be installed at the European Marine Energy Centre on Orkney sometime in 2008/9.