The proposed investment at the New and Renewable Energy Centre (NaREC) in
Blyth, Northumberland will allow the onshore testing and proving of critical
components for marine renewables onshore at significantly lower cost, prior to
deployment at sea. The NaREC marine testing facility will build on and utilise existing
infrastructure at the centre to provide testing infrastructure for marine drive systems2
and other critical wave and tidal energy device components. This would provide a
key facility for marine developers to test and prove designs/components onshore -
improving their efficiency and reliability - before committing to costly and high risk
testing and demonstration at sea.
Testing in real marine conditions is necessarily expensive in terms of the costs of
building large scale devices and deployment - and the cost of component failure,
redesign or adjustment during testing are therefore very large. This is seen as a
considerable risk by potential investors in the sector and by the utilities who will be
the ultimate customers for these technologies. This has created significant funding
difficulties for the sector and delayed its development. But this proposal will allow
investment at the earlier stage, on land, to increase the reliability and likelihood of
success of prototype tests in the water thereafter. This will reduce both costs and
risk_s associated_ with the mechanical and electronic systems within a wave energy converter or tidal turbine
used to convert wave or tidal energy into electricity.
2 I.e. the mechanical and electronic systems within a wave energy converter or tidal turbine
used to convert wave or tidal energy into electricity.
ERDF Project Initiation and Planning Form A v.03 April 2009 3
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deployed at the subsequent "nursery" stage and then at the full-scale prototype
stage. The proposal will therefore lead to an acceleration of the development of the
sector.
The £10 million investment would be for a 3 MW testing system will allow reliability
and "destruction testing"3 of tidal energy turbine assemblies and the energy
conversion units (either hydraulic or linear electric generators) of wave energy
devices. The key objectives of the project will be to deliver 3 specific objectives to
create the facility by March 2011.
l. Marine test stand development
2. Development of a marine measurement system
3. Development of marine simulation modelling software
The investment would allow between three and eight major testing projects, each
lasting between one and six months, to be carried out annually (on average around
three months duration). In each project a number of tests would be completed in a
controlled manner, allowing designers and operators to determine where
improvements could be made in machine design and efficiency. This will reduce the
level of failures in scale testing in marine conditions and avoid the costly and
hazardous unplanned interventions in the field needed to correct them. The test
facility would be run as a semi-commercial facility and a significant proportion of the
users would be expected to be part-funded by a mixture of public sector project R&D
funding (e.g. EU Framework Programmes, Carbon Trust, Technology Strategy
Board, Energy Technologies Institute, Research Councils) alongside private
investments.
DECC anticipate that there will be a high demand for the facility once commissioned.
There are no comparable testing facilities elsewhere in the world and the UK is
already a focus for the development and testing of marine energy devices. The
facility will allow developers to test and improve the reliability of their devices
throughout the development process from medium scale prototypes through to fullscale
commercial devices - at significantly lower cost and risk in comparison to sea
testing. The facility will also be used for testing engineering changes in commercial
scale devices aimed at cost reduction. This will ensure an ongoing customer base in
the medium and longer term