‘Biggest deal in history of marine energy’ for Airtricity, prospective operator of Kintyre and Islay offshore windfarms

Edinburgh-based Aquamarine Power has just completed a deal with Airtricity to develop 1GW of wave and tidal power off the Coast of the UK and Ireland by 2020. The deal is described as ‘the biggest deal in the history of marine energy’. Airtricity has recently been announced as the prospective operator of offshore windfarm developments at Machrihanish in Kintyre and Islay, with exclusivity development agreements offered by the Crown Estate.

Airtricity, now owned by Scottish and Southern Energy (itself of recent – but no longer – acquisition interest to Vattenfall, an early operator in carbon capture) and Aquamarine will enter into a 50:50 joint venture using devices and site identification software from Aquamarine and capital – undisclosed amount – from Airtricity.

Aquamarine says that work on the first two sites has already begun but is not disclosing the locations. Their CEO, Martin McAdam says: ‘Fully consented offshore windfarm sites are selling to owner-operators at between £150k and £400k per megawatt, giving a strong indication of the large potential of this deal if all 1,000MW of sites receive full consents and grid connections.

This is another move underlining the vital need for Argyll’s subsea grid upgrade interconnector from Hunterston to Carradale, if Argyll is  not to be left behind in an area of energe development where it should be in the vanguard.

Aquamarine has designed software to identify and evaluate marie energy sites anywhere in the world suitable for its Oyster hydro-electric wave power converter and its Neptune tidal energ device. It has identified several Gigawatts of potential power in sites around the UK and Ireland but the gaining of cosents will be a sensitive process.

Its Oyster wave power converter is to start testing later this year at the cutting edge European Marine Energy Centre at Stromness in Orkney.

The photograph above – of an offshore wind farm off Copenhagen – is reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence.