The footprint in the sea is quite small, so its environmental impact is quite small
OVER THE past few weeks, Martin McAdams has been busy overseeing the completion of the underwater base for Aquamarine Power’s latest creation to harvest the power of the sea in the waters off Orkney, at the northeast tip of the Scottish coast.
“We hope to be putting the machine into operation in the coming weeks – but this depends on the number of gremlins we encounter in the commissioning process,” said McAdams, a veteran of both the ESB and Airtricity.
So far, using technology developed at Queen’s University Belfast, Aquamarine has spent £60 million developing its creations, with the first, the 300KW Oyster I, operating successfully for 6,000 hours over two winters.
The beginning of life for the Oyster 800, producing 800KW, was delayed because “we did not have much opportunity to do a lot of commissioning work because we have had three hurricanes through – the winter has been appallingly bad”.
Wave energy requires patience from its backers. Today, it is three to four times more expensive than offshore wind, which is, in turn, significantly more expensive than fossil fuels and nuclear, even if McAdams argues that the true costs of the last two are hidden.
“We need to perfect the technology that we have got. We believe that we have got a good machine here,” he said in London, during a one-day visit to speak with investors.
“We need to reduce the costs dramatically, but that is not a huge concern for now. “With any new technology the first machines are always going to be dramatically more expensive,” but savings from research and development – “learning by doing” – and economies of scale will come in time, he says.
The Oyster I and an earlier prototype fresh from QUB’s water tanks were built with steel, but the Oyster 800 and its successors will employ glass-reinforced fibres, or reinforced plastics. Instead of weighing 400 tonnes, each will weigh 70 tonnes, or less.
From now on, McAdams says the objective is “not revolution anymore, but evolution”. The Oyster 5000, already being designed, will cost “hopefully between 30 and 50 per cent less” than the model currently being tested, along with being “easier to install and manufacture”.
The principles behind all of them are simple, even if execution is difficult. Each turbine has a flap that moves forwards and back with the incoming and outgoing tides, changing position every 10 seconds on average.
“We don’t make electricity in the water. Oyster pumps high-pressure water and we drive a hydro-electric turbine on land. What we put in the sea is as simple as possible. We use fresh water as the pumping fluid, so even if we had a leak we would be leaking water into the sea, rather than oil.”
Aquamarine’s creations, resting on steel piles driven into the seabed in 15m-deep waters, jut above the waterline. “The footprint in the sea is quite small, so its environmental impact is quite small,” McAdams tells The Irish Times.
Conscious of objections, Aquamarine has spent time explaining itself to Orkney’s locals and those at its other site on the island of Lewes. “The most important thing is to understand the local community, understand the concerns, mitigate them and be sensible about it,” says McAdams.
“We have had very positive feedback in Orkney. We spend as much of the construction money in the local area as possible. Last year, we spent £3 million , everyone from the local photographer to a local civil engineer. We try and give as much to the community as we can.”
On Lewes, Aquamarine plans to have up to four turbines in operation by 2015. In Ireland, it is co-operating with ESB International on the WestWave. “There, we think that should be in a position for a build-out in 2016 – one in Clare, or potentially one in Sligo.”
Today, Aquamarine employs 60 people, mostly in Edinburgh, with a few in Orkney and some in Queens, working alongside the technology’s inventor, Trevor Whittaker, and his fellow developer, Allan Thomson.
For now, the company is one of the vanguard. “There are three or four companies with technologies that have a reasonable standard of success that have machines in the water – all with fundamentally different designs.
“Others have put a one-tenth scale model in the sea that they haven’t connected to the grid. Others are just a website with a great idea. That is normal in any new industry. I like to think that we are one of the leaders,” he declares.
Urging caution, however, he declares: “We shouldn’t be overambitious. We should get the technology to a stage where it is robust and cost effective. In 10 years’ time, if we in Scotland have somewhere up to 500MW, then that would be a successful industry.”
Backed by Scottish and Southern Energy and ABB, Aquamarine has been “the most challenging” start-up of McAdams’ career, particularly during the dark days of 2008 when it was “the worst possible time” to be raising money for a business.
His ambition, however, is not to be an electricity generator, but rather to be the manufacturer of turbines for companies worldwide, including Scottish and Southern, “the largest renewable developer here”.
Objections to wave energy do exist, with some believing that the turbines change tidal patterns, interfere with trawlers or change the habits of birds, acknowledges McAdams, who grew up on a small farm in Beabeg, Co Meath, not far from Drogheda.
“Birds forage right beside the machine. We create an artificial reef. Some people argue that that is good; some people say that that is bad. You do get marine growth under the machine, so you do get fish and birds.
“Some people disagree with that because you may get species that weren’t in an area before. You may change bird nesting and feeding habitats. We have spent a lot of time and a lot of money studying all of the impacts,” he goes on.
Listing the ties built up with Marine Scotland, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Whales and Dolphins’ Protection Society, the World Wildlife Fund, McAdams declares: “We are regarded as low risk.”
Energy is extracted from the waves, “so you will see immediately behind the flap smaller waves than would be getting up to the beach. We have to be sensible about this. People have the right to object to everything, and they do.
“Fishermen say that it could disturb fishing. We are not going to be stupid. We are in 15m metres of water, so we are not in a trawler area, for example. We project above the surface. We are not going into lobster-bed areas.
“It isn’t about us going to be ruthless developers who will take over the seabed. I am not going to go onto a sandy beach in Portugal and say, ‘Hey, we are going to put up a wavefarm’. There are suitable locations and plenty of them.”
The dangers posed, however, by other forms of energy are not unknown to Orkney islanders, who reach the mainland by ferry to Thurso – just a few miles from the now-decommissioning nuclear plant at Dounreay.
Owned by the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority since 2005, Dounreay will be brought to “an interim care and surveillance state” by 2036 and to “brownfield” status by 2336, at a cost of £2.9 billion.
For nearly 30 years, the beach in front of Dounreay has been closed to the public. A mineshaft used to store intermediate nuclear waste is contaminating groundwater, along with being threatened by coastal erosion in 300 years’ time.
Since 2008, unmanned submarines have trawled the seabed in search of fragments from fuel rods that were accidentally dumped. On land, experts have since 2006 begun to enter parts of the Dounreay placed out of bounds for 50 years.
“Three hundred years to decommission, think about it, to manage the waste and return the land to normal use – that is a hell of a legacy that you are building up for future generations to deal with,” says McAdams.
Unlike most opposed to nuclear energy, he has experience of working “enjoyably” in it, during his days with ESB International when it supplied services to the nuclear industry – first in North Carolina and later in Boston.
“I am not in any way anti-nuclear, but when you see up close and personal the challenges associated – not so much running the nuclear plant, but managing the waste – then until we solve that we shouldn’t be rushing down the road of employing nuclear anywhere, including here.”
In the early 1980s, he worked on the construction of the ESB’s Moneypoint’s coal-fired station, becoming friends on his first day in the job with Eddie O’Connor, who later went on to found Airtricity. “He needed someone who knew something about computers,” McAdams says, with a laugh.
By 2016, McAdams is bidding to have Aquamarine’s costs equalling those of offshore wind, but the latter is currently 1.6-1.7 times more expensive than onshore-generated wind – which, is, in turn, more expensive than fossil fuels.
However, McAdams disputes the accounting involved: “Electricity prices have doubled in seven years because of fossil fuel rises. ‘Brown’ power prices today are somewhere around £70 per MW. Wind is £100 onshore, and offshore is coming in about £150.
“The one thing about renewables is that all of the external prices are captured. If I say that we can generate it at a price, then that is it. If you ask fossil and nuclear, what will they say? Nuclear will say that they can do it for £30.
“But that doesn’t include decommissioning and security or insurance,” says McAdams, who complains that changes made by the British Government to electricity regulation were done solely to benefit the nuclear companies.
In Germany, he argues that wind energy has benefited the public, since it has established a base layer of supply that ensures that the most expensive fossil-fuelled plants used as emergency back-up do not have to come into service.
McAdams does not dispute last year’s decision to cut subsidies for solar panels fitted, but he does question the manner in which it was done, a view shared by the UK courts which delivered a humiliating rebuff to the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
“In the 1970s, wind turbines were about 10 times the cost of today. When the first coal plants were built, they were 50 times more expensive than today. Government incentives are needed for any new industry,” he argues.
“But as it develops they should fall away in a planned and controlled manner over a long period of time,” he goes on, adding that it should “absolutely” be the aim to ensure that all renewables are subsidy-free in a decade.
Simply put, industry needs stability, he says. In Scotland, McAdams and others involved in renewables are blessed with the support of Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, who is bidding to make Scotland “the Saudi Arabia of green energy”.
“Alex Salmond has said, ‘We are doing this, we are creating the low-carbon economy’. Mitsubishi is investing in an RD plant, Samsung is going to develop an offshore turbine. Scotland has been very successful.
“I would not underestimate the political leadership. People say politicians don’t attract businesses, but I think a country that sets out a major vision for what it wants is incredibly important. Alex Salmond has been able to do that,” he says.
