Atlantis secures funding for MeyGen Phase 1B

OE Staff Published Jan 9, 2017 9:24 am ET

Tidal power firm Atlantis has been awarded €20.3 million in funding from the Horizon 2020 European Commission fund.

The cash is for the firm's Demotide project, which will design, build and operate a 6 MW turbine array, also called MeyGen Phase 1B, in the Inner Sound of the Pentland Firth in northern Scotland.

MeyGen Phase 1B, also known as Project Stroma, will start construction this year and first power is expected in 2018.

It will be built adjacent to the existing 6 MW MeyGen Phase 1A project, which delivered first power to the grid in November last year. Together, Phases 1A and 1B complete the foundation for full scale build out at the site, which has an awarded seabed lease for almost 400 MW of installed capacity.

The Demotide consortium consists of:

Technology supplier Marine Current Turbines (an Atlantis company), which is based in the UK;
DEME, comprising DEME Blue Energy and GeoSea, a marine operations provider and owner of a versatile fleet of construction vessels based in Belgium;
INNOSEA, an independent engineering firm based in France which provides technical expertise and multidisciplinary engineering services to the marine renewable energy industry; and
Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, who have been at the forefront of marine renewable energy research for over 30 years.

The Demotide project will demonstrate the technical and commercial viability of drilled foundation systems and larger rotor diameter turbines, further de-risking the industry and providing a robust path to significant cost reduction in the European tidal power sector.

Atlantis CEO, Tim Cornelius, said: “The Demotide project is the next significant step in delivering cost effective, reliable tidal stream generation for Europe. MeyGen is the world’s most high profile tidal stream project and we are delighted to be working with the European Commission and this world leading consortium of marine renewable energy experts to ensure that Europe remains at the forefront of tidal power knowledge creation. This project will help the tidal stream industry demonstrate reductions in the price per unit of electricity by increasing the energy yield per pound of investment. Demotide will set tidal on a path to cost parity with offshore wind by 2020.”