The hybrid ferries of CalMac are real

While it would unkind to say that I actually doubted the rumours that I first detected regarding ‘battery operated ferries’ coming to the Clyde, the stories did come as a surprise, meaning that whoever was going to undertake this venture (there were no real details given) had to be ready to try something new.

It wasn’t long before the story broke formally, and the news came of two hybrid RoRo (roll-on roll-off) diesel-electric ferries, described as a world first for such sea-going vessels.

While the principle of using diesel (or other) powered generators to power electric propulsion units (eliminating the need for a direct connection of a drive-shaft between the engine and the propeller), combining this with rechargeable batteries which will supply a minimum of 20% of energy consumed was new.

I’m afraid I find little that ever makes me agree with those I refer to as ‘professional CalMac bashers’, and the fact that CalMac went with this proposal is, to me, yet another reason to turn a deaf ear towards them.

In operation, the ferries can be powered from the generators, or the batteries, which are kept topped up by the generators, and will be charged overnight, while the vessels are moored. Although the overnight charging will be carried out using mains electricity, it is hoped that energy from local wind, wave or solar systems will be used to charge the batteries as such facilities become available near the moorings.

Scottish build

Even more remarkable is the fact that the innovative project will also be undertaken on the Clyde – the ferries will be built by Ferguson Shipbuilders, which will be working along with Glasgow-based ship design specialists SeaTec, and electrical specialists Tec-Source. The project is supported by a Scottish government loan, with an additional funding of £450,000 provided from the European Regional Development Fund.

Ferguson Shipbuilders Limited is now part of the Ferguson Group, and is a shipyard located in Port Glasgow. Unfortunately,  it is currently notable as being the last remaining shipbuilder on the lower Clyde, and the only builder of merchant ships on the river, where it has long been a builder of RoRo ferries.

The contract is worth £22 million, and the media carried news of the first steel being cut on January 30, 2012s, with the first ferries of the ferries set to enter service in early 2013.

The 900 tonne ferries are designed t0 accommodate 150 passengers and 23 cars, and for short routes, including the link between Skye and Raasay.

Some background links to save you the effort of digging:

Hybrid Ferries Project | CMAL | Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd

CMAL Hybrid Ferry Presentation (PDF, 1.3MB)

CMAL Hybrid Ferry Presentation (PDF, 1.9MB)

Hybrid ferry via CMAL publicity

Caithness offshore wind farms named after Scottish engineers

Three new offshore wind farms to be built off the coast of Caithness coast are to be named after notable Scottish engineers:

• Lighthouse builder Robert Stevenson (pictured), born in Glasgow
• Thomas Telford of Westerkirk, near Langholm, Dumfriesshire
• Sir Edward MacColl, born in Dumbarton, and a pioneer of hydro power in Scotland

Developers claim that the three cluster of turbines, which could contain a total of 200 turbines, could generate enough electricity to power 750,000 homes, which they say is more than a conventional coal-burning power station.

East-west split reported in wind farm cash handouts

I must admit that, despite being told by others that “There’s hardly any difference”, and I am “Imagining it”, I still haven’t really gained comfort in the new layout of the BBC’s news and related sites. The old style suited me as it was compact, and the bits I wanted were located close together, and I can’t get comfortable with the new layout, which seeks to spread stuff out more.

I’m missing the news, but hopefully I will forget the old style, and this will make the new one more palatable – it is already improving from the initial launch, as they presumably get user feedback and incorporate tweaks to the layout – and I’ll get back into the habit of looking at their feed.

When I did look in recently, I was intrigued to see that good old wind power money was still an issue, and that despite one load of folk moaning about the cost, another was holding its collective hands out for some ‘wind’-fall.

It seems we have developed and east-west differential resulting in an east-west divide in wind power benefit with communities in the west Highlands not benefiting in the same way from wind power projects as those in the east, at least according to a council report, and that in terms of planning policy and access to the National Grid, the west had fewer farms. Highland Council officers have suggested setting up a new community fund to spread more widely money contributed by wind scheme operators and have recommended setting up a new system to handle funds from wind farms and eventually marine and tidal energy projects. Their suggestion is for communities where schemes were located would get 60% of the money provided from operators, while the remainder would be put into a pot for
the benefit of the wider region. Using current figures for wind farms, £860,000 would be generated for
those areas with projects, and £575,000 for the benefit of the rest of
the council area.

According to their study, 12 of the 21 areas which make up the Highland Council region have no large-scale wind farms.

They went on to suggest that after an initial delay to allow proposed marine and tidal projects to become established, even more money could be generated for the proposed Pan-Highland Community Fund.

I must be missing something here…

While the sum is not huge, at least in terms of the research and development costs, or even some of the few awards for such work, especially in offshore tidal and wave projects, shouldn’t such monies be invested in these new projects, which always seem to be popping up in the news, seeking funding, and complaining that not enough is being done to advance this work.

Or is the aim really just to raise bribes to silence protesters, and residents of course, who are getting fed up with the advance of wind farms over Scotland, and are now blocking planning applications with objections, rather than just nodding them through because they must be ‘good’?

I just can’t help feeling that if the folk that were behind these renewables were serious, there would not be surplus or spare cash sloshing about, as everything would be being ploughed into research, development, and production, in order to get these moving in the shortest possible time.

Reality could awaken old wave power technology

Either my opponents are getting tired, or have just decided I am some sort of nut (took them long enough), but I seem to be collecting less flak as time goes on and I continue to peddle my pet theory that wind power was little more than a handy cash cow in the early day of renewables. Unlike wave or tidal power systems, all the prospective wind power developer had to do was hijack some nice land where the numbers could be stacked to show potential, and a fairly standard box of wind turbine parts could be despatched and assembled to merit payment of a handy subsidy, more commonly referred to as Renewable Obligation Certificate (ROC), or RO in Scotland.

This is generally misinterpreted as my suggesting that there was something untoward, or even fraudulent, in this process, but all I really intend to do by pointing out the blindingly obvious is that the easy route was taken, and the more difficult, but effective, road to wave or tidal power was bypassed. The subsidy was always available to any form of renewable power generation, the thing was that the only worthwhile system were usually wind based. The reason is obvious. By comparison, sea based renewable power means coping with a corrosive environment, and a liquid power source that carries much more energy than is gaseous partner, meaning that the hardware has to be much stronger to cope.

Back at the start of the wave and tidal power search, there was little research (and the bulk of the interest was in the speedy return from easily manufactured wind systems), and less incentive as a result. Now, the message that the land would have to be buried under wind turbines is beginning to get through, and wave/tidal schemes are beginning to look more attractive, especially since coal is still seen as dirty for various reasons, CCS (carbon capture and storage) is still to get going seriously, and the old radiophobia problem is still being loudly championed by those opposed to nuclear power.

The potential good news is that as time has passed, material science has progressed, we have better computer control systems, and the old ideas that were not developed in the early years of wave/tidal power may hold new promised if revisited and addressed using ‘new’ technology.

The BBC reported that ‘forgotten’ wave power technology from the 1980s was being examined and evolved to provide design inspiration for new systems currently being developed, and that there had been an assumption that because the technology hadn’t worked then, it wasn’t worthy of reconsideration. However, it seems that as is usually the case, making an assumption rather than a reasoned judgement was a bad idea, and that by revisiting the earlier ideas, but using modern material, an effective wave power generator could be built.

BBC News – Firm develops ‘forgotten’ wave power technology

It may be taking a while but, as time passes, it looks as if the ideas I’ve been posting in here about wave/tidal power over the past few years (while I also took a gentle, but firm, swipe at wind power) just might not be the ramblings of a deranged lunatic after all.

This particular project has another couple of years to run, so we’ll see how close I was, and if there’s anything useful to be had, or if any more ‘surprises’ join it.

Renewables bob back up in the news

The various renewable power generation schemes seemed to have gone a little quiet in the news, which was handy after I decided to stop following them as I was afraid of becoming stuck in some sort of pro or anti crusade, rather than just being interested.

From comments received, it seem that if you disagree with claims about any particular system you are quickly targeted by its fans, and seen as some sort of heretic, while if you offer positive remarks, others will consider you as some kind of nut – or green loony.

Still, the past week has been interesting…

Wave Power

Starting in Scotland, the Vagr Atferd generator has just been completed and launched in Leith, where it was produced by local firm Pelamis Wave Power (PWP) for the German energy giant E.On. It will travel to Orkney, where it will be tested for three years to prepare it for commercial use.

180 metres long, it weighs 1,500 tonnes and can produce up to 750 kW of electricity.

Launch picture courtesy of the Scottish Government web site.

Solar Power

Next, is the possibly surprising story that proposals for a £40 million network of solar farms are to be the subject of a public consultation. This will look at plans for a 15-acre “energy farm” on a green-field site at St Kew, three miles east of Wadebridge, which acts as the gateway to north Cornwall’s popular tourist heartlands. A local farmer has raised £4.5 million of private investment to construct the first of what could be ten similar sites across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, which, if all built, would triple the UK’s current solar generating capacity.

I sense an alarm bell ringing about the seriousness of this proposal, not because of the viability or otherwise of solar power – I’ve lived down on the south coast of England during summer and winter, and the difference between Central Scotland and the south coast is stunning, no wonder the oldies go and retire there. Even in the height of (a normal) winter, you can find there is no real need for heating – at least if you are a Scot used to freezing in Glasgow during (a normal) winter.

What I actually found of concern was the proposer’s statement to the effect that, “To reduce costs, R-ECO says it is cheaper to employ five staff to manually adjust the panels so they face towards the sun as it moves across the sky than install automated tilting mechanisms.”

Five staff at average wages would cost about £125,000 per annum, just to carry out an inefficient manual adjustment of the solar panels. Inefficient because they would only be able to optimise the panels at intervals, presumably when they did their rounds, and not continuously as would be the case of an automated system. I can think of two different control system that could be used to control cheap servos, and these are priced in the hundred of pound per system, rather than thousands. Costs could be further reduced by having one controller control banks of panels, meaning only the servos need to be duplicated.

Update

As I thought, there is no problem in automating the sun-tracking process, and gaining a considerable efficiency increase as a result. This site offers one way of achieving this, which could be constructed more professionally, and still be cheaper than the annual cost of employing five staff to do this by hand.

I think the people in Cornwall need to employ some smarter planners, if they are serious.

Britain described as the ‘Saudi Arabia of renewable energy’

I suspect that the articles suggesting Britain could be the ‘Saudi Arabia of renewable energy’ might be better entitled if the word ‘Britain’ was replaced by ‘Scotland’, as most of the reports I’ve spotted have tended to concentrate on the North Sea, and the power that could be collected there. But to be fair, the bigger picture does draw on power that could be collected from further afield.

My own opinion of these claims is to side with the sceptics, as although the report was produced by an independent group, it was sponsored by Department of Energy and Climate Change, the Scottish government and the Crown Estate as well as companies including Scottish and Southern Energy, E.ON and wind turbine manufacturer, Vestas.

This is not to imply that there is anything particularly underhand, rather that it will be biased to report the most favourable options, and minimise or ignore those that are not advantageous to the sponsors. Although I haven’t noted any particular article or report, a look around the web nowadays will find publications which suggest that the promised return from wind farms are failing to meet promised made, as the wind has failed to blow to the extent that initial applications claimed it would. In light of this real world ‘revelation’, the following quote from the study just sounds to good be true, and perhaps the cost of achieving what is stated would be impractical:

The study, undertaken by the Boston Consulting Group, suggests that Britain could not only keep the lights on but would produce a surplus, suggesting the need for connections to a “super grid” to enable electricity to be exported via subsea cables. It predicts that using even 29% of the available resources, Britain could save 1.1bn tonnes of carbon dioxide between now and the middle the century.

I think the closing remark is much more reasonable, and contains the necessary warning about net getting too carried away by promises of Britain becoming the Saudi Arabia of renewables:

There was caution among financial analysts such as Dean Cooper, head of clean tech at Ambrian Resources. He said: “We see the report as providing compelling sizing information to value the offshore resource, but equally it highlights the herculean scale of efforts needed to achieve the numbers outlined. To reach 78GW will require a build rate of 2.8GW per annum by 2050, which is equivalent to more than two 5MW turbines every day. This compares to the equivalent of one 5MW turbine installed every two weeks for the installed stock of offshore wind in the UK today. Offshore wind will be an important element in the UK’s energy mix to keep the lights on, yet the gaps in supply chain, grid and planning to achieve this are monumental. There is money to be made in offshore wind as a structural growth trend, but when?”

This sounds much more like a statement made in the real world where such projects have to be funded by real money, attract real investment, and work in real time, not some impossible or impractically short timescale that suits a soundbite made for the benefit of the media, or political expediency.

Think back to the first article I mentioned above, where new technology for collecting wave power is not even going to become operational for at least three years, as it is going to take that long merely to test its practicality in the sea. If anything goes wrong and it falls apart, the technology could take many more years to refine and make practical, and the way some investors work, it could simply be scuttled and abandoned if it does fail under test, and no-one is prepared to invest further.

Two offshore renewable projects win over £100 million EU funding

Nice to see the announcement of two offshore renewable projects winning over £100 million of European Union (EU) funding.

The EU energy commissioner has confirmed a grant of £36 million (40 million euros) for a proposed offshore wind farm near Aberdeen.  The Aberdeen Bay project would see some 23 wind turbines sited between one and three miles offshore, in an area extending about three miles from the Bridge of Don to Blackdog. The scheme is a joint venture between Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group (AREG) and Swedish utility company Vattenfall.

A further £67 milion (74 million euros) has also been approved for an offshore platform to be located between Shetland and the Scottish mainland, which will be part of the North Sea Grid, and will permit the connection of wind farms in eight European countries.

Wave power and tidal power boosted at Stromness centre

Slowly, but ever so slowly, power from the waves and tides is being looked at seriously, presumably as developers begin to realise that the the old wind power subsidy was actually a renewable energy subsidy,  coupled with the realisation that serious amounts of wind power would not only see every attractive piece of wilderness sprout wind turbines, but also every just about every piece of open land as well.

The European Marine Energy Centre at Stromness is currently has almost a dozen experimental devices designed to capture the energy of the tides and the waves, under evaluation, although it’s still too early to tell if any of them will work on a large scale or ever succeed commercially. What matter though is that they are being tested, and tested in a seriously stressful environment.

Scotland is potentially at the forefront of these technologies, and should be taking a lead from the other countries around the world that took a lead with wind power.

If these developments are not managed and handled properly, then the advances made at places such as Stromness will go the same way as most other Scottish innovations.

Recall that the world is full of inventions that e created by Scots, many of them famous, but not for making their fortune from, or exploiting their creations at home. Rather, a read through the history books will usually show that they had to leave these shores and go abroad before they found backers and investors, so the real winners were usually America or Canada, not Scotland.

Hydro-electric wave energy machine first for Orkney

Making a nice change from the usual gloomy onshore wind power mentions, and their opposition, this is hopefully the forerunner of many more mentions for hydro-electric wave energy, as momentum begins to build for this arguably more sensible option – in my opinion at least. After all, the waves wave 24/7, while the wind blows… when it feels like it.

According to wave energy company Aquamarine Power, Orkney currently has “the world’s largest working hydro-electric wave energy device”, and “the world’s only hydro-electric wave energy device which is producing power

The device is sited just off Orkney, and was switched on by First Minister Alex Salmond, today, November 20, 2009, when Aquamarine Power’s ‘Oyster’ was connected to the national grid as part of sea trials.

The device comprises a hinged flap which is connected to the sea-bed, with each wave causes the flap to move, and drive a hydraulic piston. The system produces power by pumping high pressure water to its onshore hydro-electric turbine. A farm of 20 Oysters could provide energy to power 9,000 three-bedroom homes.

Having launched the first system, Mr Salmond also announced new funding of £975,000 to help deliver ‘Oyster 2′.

Further information in Aquamarines’s Press Release – Scotland’s First Minister launches Oyster.

Tidal powered Islay

Plans have been announced for a tidal power scheme by ScottishPower, intended to supply almost all electricity for the inhabitants of Islay for 23 hours a day.

The company currently plans to apply for planning permission to install ten 30-metre underwater turbines, at a cost of £50 million, capable of supplying 10 MW to the island’s population of 3,500 when the installation is completed in 2011. They will be sited in the Sound of Islay, where the tidal water is said to move at up to three metres per second.

The Islay Energy Trust, a community organisation chaired by Philip Maxwell, has been helping to lobby local politicians and opponents of the project. In return, it will receive a small slice of the revenue to fund community projects on the island, such as a swimming pool. George J Gillies is a local fisherman who fishes for crab and lobster at either end of the Sound of Islay in winter. He complains that his lobster nets could get tangled in the turbines and says the project threatens the livelihood of eight local fishing families. But he seems resigned: “If it’s going to generate money, it will get the go-ahead.” Because the generators at Islay will be on the seabed, no one can see them and the Scottish government will have the final say on planning.

Although there are opponents to the scheme, there is also strong support on the island. The Caol Ila distillery overlooks the Sound, and like the rest of the island, gets most of its electricity from Hunterston, a nuclear power station on the mainland. But the reactor is being decommissioned in 2016 and the distillery suffers frequent power cuts in stormy weather when electricity pylons are blown over.

Alan Mortimer, head of renewables at ScottishPower, admitted tidal energy is more expensive than offshore wind, which costs up to £3 million per MW built and itself is only barely economic. Tidal developers earn more subsidies under the Renewable Obligation Scheme than offshore wind( and presumably onshore wind), but only once schemes are operational.

The renewable energy industry admits the techniques to generate electricity from marine energy are in their infancy. Morna Cannon, from Scottish Renewables, said: “This makes it very hard to pin down the costs of the technology at the moment.”

Although the project is to be applauded, the comments above confirm my own long held belief that such schemes have long been ignored and starved of investment, and hence research over the years, in favour of the more high profile and visible wind power option, which is easier for grinning politicians to be photographed beside, and earn “Green Brownie Points” in the media and public eye. It also avoids the backlash that the myopic rush for onshore wind power brought upon itself, as developers raced to get their subsidies, and planted wind farms anywhere they could – until the public started to get sick of the sight of them.

Floating on a boat above an invisible generator bolted to seabed doesn’t have the same attraction for a photo-opportunity, although some might relish the prospect of photographs of some MPs struggling underwater, and trying to look serious while the cope with their newly acquired SCUBA gear.

Power from the waves – how to

Regular readers will know I’m happy to express my preference for collecting renewable energy from the waves, and that it’s not based on the blight factor of wind farms (justified as that may be, as they used to be thrown up without a thought until people started to notice them), but due to simple physics, and the greater energy density of a moving volume of water when compared to the same moving volume air.

Those nice people at New Scientist magazine have prepared a rather nice little review of rival designs race to harness ocean energy, and it makes the interesting observation that while wind turbines have come to rely on one fairly standard design, which could almost be described as mass-produce (or is does that mean there’s a fiddle soewhere?), ocean based energy collection systems still show an amazing diversity of design and operating principles. A possible sign that unlike wind power, no-one is looking at the options seriously, and developing an optimum response? Don’t miss the gallery of designs which compete to harness the oceans’ power.

Much is made by some of the harsh operating environment which ocean-based system have to operate in, and their remoteness, which presents a maintenance problem. But this is really a smokescreen, as we have plenty of experience in handling both these issue thanks to more than three decades of oil and gas platform operations in the North Sea. Despite the potential returns, the easy solution of wind power has surely starved ocean power of funding, and we’re only now coming to realise that wind power isn’t going to be the magic bullet which solves the renewable energy problem.

Wind power and wave power – VHS and Betamax?