International Power appoints SeaRoc for Pentland tidal project
Tuesday 28 April 2009
Energy company International Power Marine Developments has appointed the offshore specialist SeaRoc as chief engineer on its bid to install marine power generation in the Pentland Firth.
The Brighton-based SeaRoc Group will fill the role of owner's engineer on the 10MW project, which has just completed a scoping report.
This project is an important step forward for the marine renewable energy industry.
The offshore renewables engineering firm, which has worked on the Pelamis Orcadian project and the SeaGen tidal scheme as well as a range of UK offshore wind projects, will also provide specialist marine management and health and safety services.
Peter Hodgetts, chief executive of the SeaRoc group, said: "We are delighted to work with a client who understands the importance of comprehensive planning and management of all activities offshore. This approach helps to de-risk the project and ensures that it is delivered safely, efficiently and on budget."
Pentland Firth project
International Power Marine Developments (IPMD), which is a wholly owned subsidiary of International Power, is planning to deploy 10MW of power generation capacity in the Pentland Firth, (see this New Energy Focus story).
It is hoping to use tidal stream devices from Rolls-Royce-backed Tidal Generation Limited (TGL), and in November it commissioned oil and gas consultants Xodus Aurora to carry out an environmental scoping report as part of the project's planning application.
Yesterday IPMD said that its planning application was making "good progress" and that a scoping report for the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was submitted to the Scottish Government in January.
Liz Foubister, principal environmental consultant at Xodus Aurora, said: "This project is an important step forward for the marine renewable energy industry. It is important that activities associated with renewable energy exploitation are managed and implemented in a manner in keeping with modern principles of sustainable development."
She added: "The completion of a robust EIA scoping exercise for IPMD's Pentland Firth project has embraced this philosophy."
The scoping report aims to identify the potential environmental impact of installing, operating, maintaining and decommissioning a proposed project.
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The Pentland Firth boasts up to 2GW of marine energy potential
The workshop aimed to give IPMD a well informed scoping opinion from the Scottish government, which the firm said was received this month.
IPMD said yesterday that the next stage of the project will be to secure a seabed lease to develop marine power from the Crown Estate, which owns the development rights on the seabed.
Opened up for marine energy development last year (see this New Energy Focus story), the Pentland Firth is the strait between Caithness and the Orkneys.
It is estimated that there could be between 700MW and 2GW of potential marine energy locked up in the region.
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