Aquamarine Oyster Expands on Wave Energy
In Scotland, Aquamarine Power is pushing development of its wave power generator. The company is about to install its second Oyster machine in the coming months.
Wave Energy has been overshadowed by more prominent renewable energy forms such as Wind and Solar but there has been progress and some failures over the years.
Aquamarine has been experimenting in the North of Scotland with the Oyster and might just be on the verge of expanding the testing to a full scale wave energy plant. In a few months a second Oyster will be located on the seabed just off the coast of Scotland.
The company is in expansion mode and has made a bid for European funding for the development of a 28MW wave power project. Once completed the Oyster array will be the largest grid connected wave farm in the world.
Altogether a total of 10 Oysters will be bobbing up and down in the waves when operational.
Scotland is ideally located to capture wave energy. The constant swells push across the Atlantic Ocean and can contain a massive amount of energy to harvest. This is also the major problem that Aquamarine have to overcome. Wave machines have to withstand the massive forces and being offshore they have to be extremely reliable.
The big advantage here is wave energy can operate at night unlike solar power. Hopefully the project will become cost-effective and wave energy will become a more common form of renewable energy.
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