HydroWing is gearing up for deployment of its tidal vitality know-how, following the latest announcement that it has been awarded a contract for a 10MW tidal stream vitality venture in Wales.
HydroWing was the most important tidal stream venture in Wales to achieve success within the UK authorities’s newest Contracts for Difference spherical. The venture can be situated on the Morlais tidal vitality web site in Anglesey, which is managed by the social enterprise Menter Môn. The Morlais web site is the UK’s largest consented tidal vitality scheme.
Richard Parkinson, MD of Inyanga Marine Energy Group, which is the mother or father firm for HydroWing, mentioned: “The Morlais project is a major milestone in our quest to become the largest provider of tidal energy arrays in the world.”
HydroWing is now beginning intensive work on delivering the venture, together with participating with native stakeholders and provide chain firms whereas additionally establishing a presence in Anglesey. A complete analysis venture has already been performed in partnership with Bangor University to evaluate the speed of native tide currents. The outputs from this have been very encouraging in informing expectations on the yield traits of the location.
Parkinson continued: “This ground-breaking project will launch our innovative tidal stream technology at utility scale. Commercialisation of the tidal energy sector has so far been held back by high operations and maintenance costs. Our next generation technology meets that challenge head on.”
HydroWing is designed to be a cheap and scalable resolution to tidal stream vitality technology. A supporting construction sits on the seabed, underneath its personal weight. The ‘wings’ which maintain the generators are then lowered into place on this construction. This makes HydroWing very easy to deploy. The generators are bi-directional, so that they generate energy because the tide is available in and because it goes out. These generators are additionally cost-effective to supply at scale.
“The HydroWing technology to be used for the Morlais project will incorporate the next generation Tocardo T-3 turbines,” says Parkinson. “We have been working on the development of a Passive Pitch Mechanism which integrates with the Tocardo Bi-Blade system allowing the blade dimensions to be increased, while shedding pitch at higher loads. This is similar to an active pitching mechanism but without compromising the reliability for which the Tocardo Turbines are well known. This increases the yield by 50-60% and makes projects in lower flow locations more feasible and investible.
“HydroWing and QED Naval joined forces in 2020 to work together on Tocardo because we could see the huge potential of this turbine technology. The Tocardo T-3 turbines design builds on insights from the 1.25MW tidal energy demonstration array in Eastern Scheldt, which completed last month.
“The HydroWing team have scrutinised every aspect of our technology to ensure we have optimised each area in terms of cost reduction and improving efficiency so as to be able to deliver a truly commercially viable project at Morlais, with deployment in 2027.
“Tidal energy is a crucial part of the mix to help achieve net zero targets. We believe that this tidal stream project will be a stepping stone towards lowering the costs for tidal energy and that our innovative HydroWing technology will help unlock the commercial viability of tidal energy around the world.”
