In October The Crown Estate announced that Minesto has been granted a lease agreement for seabed in Northern Ireland. At the same time, Minesto is expanding with 16 new employees, and the aim is to further develop its technology for commercialisation. This expansion has been made possible after the owners injected new capital into the company and
the Swedish Energy Agency granted the company £0.5M for R&D operations.
The purpose of the site in Northern Ireland is to test the technology and to build a solid technological foundation for future development. The plan is to use the site for one year so as to undertake a stringent test and verification programme. The power station, built in a scaled-down version, has mechanical, hydrodynamic and control functionality features similar to a full-scale device.
“Although the scaled-down test programme minimizes R&D costs and development time, it can still largely test and verify the technology’s full functionality,” says Ted Rosendahl, CTO of Minesto.
The R&D programme is partly funded by the Carbon Trust aspart of its Applied Research programme. The recent positive news is important to the company. One effect is increased support from investors. During the autumn, the current shareholders expanded the company’s financial reserves through the largest emission of shares in the company’s history. This was topped off with a research grant from the Swedish Energy Agency, providing an additional £0.5 million for further development. The Swedish Energy Agency is supporting this technology development even though tides are not
prevalent in Sweden. The Agency’s view is that the positive global impact that the technology may have justifies its financial support.
“In a global perspective, future production of electricity from deep-water low-velocity tidal streams can constitute a significant renewable resource that is both technically and economically viable,” says Birgitta Palmberer, Division Manager of the Technical Department at the Swedish Energy Agency.
At the moment the company is focusing on Northern Ireland. Arlene Foster, Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment in the Northern Ireland Executive, says:
“Building on Northern Ireland’s proud heritage of research and development in wave and tidal energy (for example the work of Queen’s University Belfast which underpins Wavegen’s OWC technology), we are delighted to see Swedish company Minesto plan to test its technology in Strangford Lough. In collaboration with The Crown Estate, we will soon be announcing opportunities for commercial-scale offshore wind and tidal development.”
