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Wave Hub sets sail for Cornish test site
27 July 2010
Wave Hub, the South West RDA’s (Regional
Development Agency) pioneering marine energy project, set sail for
Cornwall overnight [17:00 Monday, July 26] in preparation for
installation next week on the seabed 16 kilometres offshore.
Wave Hub is creating the world’s largest test
site for wave energy technology by building a grid-connected socket
on the seabed off the coast of Cornwall, to which wave power
devices can be connected and their performance evaluated.
The £42 million project has been developed by
the South West RDA and is a cornerstone of its strategy to develop
a world class marine energy industry in South West England.
For the past week the 12-tonne hub and its 25
kilometre, 1,300 tonne subsea cable have been gradually loaded on
to the cable laying ship Nordica at Hartlepool docks in North East
England, where the hub and cable were manufactured.
The Nordica left Hartlepool at 17:00 on Monday
July 26 and after a brief stop for bunkering, is due make her way
to St Ives Bay on the Cornish coast where she is expected to arrive
on Thursday afternoon.
The RDA’s Wave Hub general manager, Guy
Lavender, said: “Nordica’s arrival marks the start of the Wave Hub
deployment operation and they will begin work straight away. The
entire cable route will be surveyed before the cable is pulled
ashore at Hayle early next week and buried in the sand for two
kilometres out to sea in an operation that will take around two
days.
“At the same time the Nordica will head out to
sea laying the cable as it goes. It should reach the Wave Hub site
after about four or five days and will lower the hub on to the
seabed in about 50 metres of water using its on-board crane.”
Once Wave Hub has been positioned on the
seabed the Nordica will head to the port of Falmouth on the south
coast of Cornwall to pick up a 45-tonne underwater tractor that
will bury the subsea cable for a further five kilometres
offshore.
In the autumn Wave Hub will undergo a series
of tests in preparation for welcoming its first wave energy devices
next year.
Wave Hub is being funded with £12.5 million
from the South West RDA, £20 million from the European Regional
Development Fund Convergence Programme and £9.5 million from the UK
government.
An independent economic impact assessment has
calculated that Wave Hub could create 1,800 jobs and inject £560
million in the UK economy over 25 years. Almost 1,000 of these jobs
and £332 million could be generated in South West England.
Ends
For more information
contact John Casey, on 07796-615864 or via
jason.clark@dca-pr.co.uk
Notes to Editors
- Images: of Wave Hub and the
cable being loaded at Hartlepool dock can be downloaded here:
www.2daymedia.com/fotoweb/linkgen.asp?linkid=WaveHubInstallation1_2010720163142831
www.2daymedia.com/fotoweb/linkgen.asp?linkid=WaveHubInstallation2_2010720163323331
- Film: of Wave Hub and the
subsea cable under construction is available here: www.youtube.com/southwestrda
- You can follow Wave Hub’s progress on Twitter (@wavehub).
- The South West RDA works for and promotes a
modern, stronger and more resilient economy across South West
England. Our work involves creating better jobs, successful
businesses, more prosperous cities, towns and villages within an
economy that uses less carbon and will still be thriving in 20, 50
and 100 years time.
- Wave Hub is a major marine renewables
infrastructure project that will create an electrical ‘socket’ on
the seabed in some 50 metres of water around 16kms (10 miles) off
the coast of Cornwall in South West England and connected to the
National Grid via a subsea cable. Groups of wave energy devices
will be connected to Wave Hub and float on or just below the
surface of the sea to assess how well they work and how much power
they generate before being commercially produced and deployed.
There are four berths available at Wave Hub, each covering two
square kilometres. Wave Hub will have an initial maximum capacity
of 20MW (enough electricity to power approximately 7,000 homes) but
has been designed with the potential to scale up to 50MW in the
future. The first wave energy devices are expected to be deployed
in 2011.
- Legal agreements have been signed with leading renewable energy
company Ocean Power Technologies Limited to take
the first berth at Wave Hub using its PowerBuoy wave energy
converter. Images of PowerBuoy can be downloaded at www.flickr.com/photos/southwestengland.
Discussions are ongoing with other device developers.
- JDR Cable Systems Ltd has manufactured the
armoured 25 km (16 mile) 33,000 volt cable and hub assembly for
Wave Hub at its factory in Hartlepool in a contract worth £7.6
million. The cable has been made in one continuous length and is
made up of six copper cores, 48 fibre optic cables, two layers of
steel wire armouring and an outer polymer sheath. It is 16
centimetres in diameter and weighs 1,300 tonnes. The hub weighs
around 12 tonnes and will sit on the seabed. It will split the main
cable linking it to the National Grid on shore into four 300m cable
‘tails’ to which groups of wave energy devices can be attached and
monitored for how they perform. CTC Marine
Projects is carrying out the installation of the hub and
subsea cable on the seabed in a contract worth around £7
million.
- Powermann Ltd of Poole in Dorset has been
appointed to handle the £1 million onshore electrical works that
will connect Wave Hub to the UK’s National Grid network, and a new
electricity sub-station at Hayle has been built by Dawnus
Construction.
- In Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly the Convergence
Programmes are made up of European Regional Development
Fund (£347 million) and European Social Fund (£153 million).
Convergence Programmes will run until 2013 and follow the
successful Objective One Programme and prior to that Objective 5b.
For further information see: www.convergencecornwall.com.
Convergence helpline telephone: 0800 0280120.