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Thu, 02 October 11:00 2008 |
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World's first wave farm opens in Portugal |
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MANUEL PINHO, Portugal's Economy Minister, last week visited the world’s first commercial wave-power project at Agucadoura, to participate in the ceremony which officially inaugurated the wave-farm project. He travelled to the site on the Portuguese Naval Frigate, ‘Corte Real’ where a helicopter was launched to film the Pelamis machines and the raising of the Portuguese flag on one of the machines.
The project is a joint venture, 77 per cent owned by a group of three promoters, comprising global specialist asset manager, Babcock and Brown, Energias de Portugal (EDP) and Efacec and Scottish company, Pelamis Wave Power, who hold the remaining 23 per cent. The announcement is a significant step forward in efforts to harness wave-power as a commercially viable source of electricity.
The Agucadoura project will be the first of a series of projects undertaken by the partnership. The association between the project promoters and Efacec, an industrial manufacturer, will enable the development of a Portuguese wave energy cluster, which will be able to promote electricity production projects with complementary equipment development and manufacturing units.
This Portuguese-based cluster will maintain and develop a close connection with the local knowledge centres in the field, thus supporting the creation of jobs as well as driving knowledge and understanding of the sector.
The Agucadoura project will initially generate power using three Pelamis ‘wave energy converters’, semi-submerged, articulated structures composed of cylindrical sections linked by hinged joints.
In this first phase, the total investment corresponds to about nine million euros. The second phase of the project will be to manufacture and install a further 25 machines, bringing the installed capacity up to 21MW.
The generators are located approximately three miles off the coast. Once completed, the project is expected to meet the average annual electricity demand of more than 15,000 Portuguese households whilst displacing more than 60,000 tonnes per year of carbon dioxide emissions from conventional generating plants.
The project benefits from government legislation and the implementation of a long-term feed in tariff for the electricity generated by the project. This incentive will, in the future, allow for the project financing of these initiatives and provide an incentive for investment in the nascent technology by project financiers and technology providers.
Antonino Lo Bianco, European Head of Infrastructure at Babcock and Brown, said, “I am very pleased to be announcing the start of this milestone project today. Wave power offers huge potential, not just for Portugal but for many countries around the world where the harnessing of an inexhaustible supply of wave-energy will produce a clean, zero-carbon energy domestically. We expect wave-power to become a widespread renewable energy technology and look forward to the benefits that investing at this early stage will bring.”
Phil Metcalf, CEO of Pelamis Wave Power added, “We see this project as an important strategic step to underpin continued commercial growth and technological development. We can certainly predict that Portugal will benefit substantially from taking this visionary lead in developing its wave-energy resources.”
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