Technology

The Basque Energy Agency (EVE) and the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE) have just agreed to create a new public company that will own Bimep, the infrastructure for marine energy research located in Armintza in the municipality of Lemoiz (Bizkaia). The facility will be the first of its kind in Spain and the second in Europe.

The Spanish company has announced the launch of Pelamis P2 in Scotland, to capture and exploit wave energy. Iberdrola recently towed the device by ship from the Scottish port of Leith, where it was "pre tested", to the EMEC research centre in the Orkney Islands, which has become the global R & D capital for this technology.

The Galician regional government is looking for a site for what will be the region’s first prototype wave power array. The Director of the Energy Institute of Galicia (Inega), Eliseo Dieguez, recently visited the port of Cariño, where the company Galicia Mar Renovables is close to completing construction of a plant for manufacturing its wave energy buoys.

Located in Mutriku, fifty kilometres from San Sebastian in northern Spain, the device has been promoted by the Basque government. It has a capacity of 296 kilowatts, will produce 600,000 kilowatt hours per year and is, says the Basque Energy Agency “a world leader that opens the door to new marine developments and the creation of a new manufacturing sector that can generate wealth and employment”.

Technologies to harness energy from the oceans, the youngest of all renewables, are beginning to be rolled out. According to information presented during the general assembly of the marine energy section of the Spanish Renewable Energy Producers Association (APPA) on 16 June in Avilés (Asturias), there are already 26 devices already installed in Spanish waters.

The Canary Islands Oceanic Platform, launched two years ago, has begun testing a device off the coast of Gran Canaria that harnesses the motion of the waves to generate electricity. Developed at 1:5 scale, the device has a power range of between 100 kW and 150 kW and is ideal for medium-sized waves, such as those found in the archipelago.

A report by a working group of the Economic and Social Council from different European regions – Galicia, Lisbon, Poitou Charentes (France), the Canary Islands, Cantabria and the Basque Country – among others, concludes that the waves battering the coast of Galicia are among the most productive in Europe. In its conclusions, the authors of the report urge Brussels to press for a European Industrial Initiative for wave and tidal energy.

Prepared by the University of Cantabria at the request of Spain’s Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE), the "Study of the potential of wave energy in Spain" aims to promote the inclusion of wave energy in Spain’s new 2011-2020 National Action Plan for Renewable Energy.

More than 600 delegates, international experts and leading companies from around the world gather at the Bilbao Exhibition Centre (BEC) as from tomorrow as part of Wave Week, which will include a surfing “Expression Session” at Sopelana, which will act as “a meeting point for technologists and surfers to share ideas and reflections about the sea and its energy”.

Iberdrola Renovables, through its subsidiary ScottishPower, has won the largest tender in the world to harness the power of the sea and will build a 95-MW tidal power array in Scottish waters. The firm has signed an agreement with its Norwegian partner, Hammerfest Strøm, to develop the facility.