POWER April 2021 - 10

GLOBAL MONITOR
in the solar sector has served him well as
he oversees the country's nuclear power
industry. " It drives me to distraction,
thinking about the detractors of small
modular reactors, what they're saying
in the Canadian context, " Gorman said.
" They say we have all the answers with
wind and solar ... 10 years ago, people
were detractors to solar, they were calling
it an expensive science investment, it
took a lot of perseverance by the international
community so we could produce it
in scale and bring down the cost. We're
going to see SMRs in the Canadian market
as soon as 2026. OPG has said they
will connect to the grid in 2028. That's
like the blink of an eye. We desperately
need to ensure we're investing in these
technologies, developing the technology,
and deploying it at scale to get those
cost efficiencies. "
-Darrell Proctor is associate editor
for POWER.
Ocean Power Developers Made
Crucial Progress in 2020
Tidal and wave energy installations in
2020 brought global cumulative installations
for ocean energy to almost 60
MW. Another 6 MW of wave and tidal
energy is slated for deployment this
year, suggesting marked growth for the
fledgling sector.
According to industry group Ocean
Energy Europe, despite challenges and
uncertainty over 2020 that tested the
sector's resilience, several novel tidal
stream projects were deployed last year,
adding 865 kW to cumulative installations.
An assortment of wave energy
devices were also deployed, bringing
wave energy's global total to 23.3 MW.
While installations slowed compared to
past years, " [t]o install devices and avoid
cancellations during a global pandemic
is clear evidence of ocean energy's resilience
to shocks and slowdowns, " noted
Ocean Energy Europe.
Existing tidal farms and new demonstration
projects notably pushed up tidal
stream power production to 60 GWh for
the first time. About 12 GWh came from
European pilot farms-Meygen, Oosterschelde,
and the pan-European Enabling
Future Arrays in Tidal (EnFAIT) project.
Among novel projects deployed last year
are several in Scotland.
Irish company DesignPro Renewables
early in 2020 completed the deployment
and successful testing of its 60-kW
(DPR60) turbine at Kirkwall in the Orkney
Islands, Scotland. Also notable is Scottish
tidal technology developer NOVA
10
product to a 1.2-MW power plant.
Outside of Europe, interest in the tid3.
Eunice-a next-generation direct-drive
tidal turbine-is one of four turbines installed
at the Shetland Tidal Array in Scotland as part
of the EnFAIT project, which aims to make
tidal energy a commercial reality. Courtesy:
NOVA Innovation
Innovation's expansion of the Shetland
Tidal Array as part of the EnFAIT project
with a fourth turbine. The new turbine,
dubbed " Eunice, " is a commercial directdrive
tidal turbine (Figure 3). According to
NOVA, the next generation of direct-drive
turbines could slash the " cost of tidal energy
by a third-making tidal energy cost
competitive with fossil fuels. "
Now in its third year, the five-year
EnFAIT project will shift its focus from
learning from the three existing turbines
and onto installing direct-drive turbines
to demonstrate cost advantages. " We
are driving down costs and branching
into new markets to make tidal energy
mainstream, " said NOVA CEO Simon
Forrest. " By 2030, tidal energy will be
cheaper than nuclear power and fossil
fuels, providing cleaner and sustainable
energy for coastal communities around
the world. "
Minesto, a commercial vendor of a
tidal kite, in 2020 marked two pivotal milestones.
In February, it secured a power
purchase agreement (PPA) with Faroe
Islands power entity SEV for 2.2 MW-a
deal that comprises the planned installations
of two grid-connected 100-kW Minesto
Deep Green kites, as well as future
utility-scale systems of at least 2 MW. And
in December, it began delivering power to
the Faroese grid under that PPA, after installing
and commissioning one 100-kW
DG100 tidal kite system (Figure 4).
" The DG100 commissioning progress
means that Minesto now has initiated the
process of generating renewable electricity
from the tidal flows in Vestmannasund,
using the Deep Green technology's
unique principle of enhancing the speed
of the kite through the water to power
homes connected to the Faroese grid, "
the company said. Minesto in March said
it is now working to scale up the DG100
www.powermag.com
al market is taking off, especially in Canada,
where the government stepped up
to finance Sustainable Marine's Plat-I
floating tidal energy platform. In February,
Sustainable Marine said the 420kW
PLAT-I 6.40 floating tidal energy
platform-which it calls the " world's
first floating tidal energy array " -was
completed in Meteghan, Nova Scotia,
and launched in the Bay of Fundy, which
experiences the highest tides on earth.
The platform will undergo commissioning
and testing in Grand Passage and
then be moved to the FORCE (Fundy
Ocean Research Centre for Energy) site
as part of the first phase of the groundbreaking
9-MW Pempa'q In-stream Tidal
Energy Project.
In the U.S., Verdant Power last October
installed an array of three tidal turbines
at its Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy
(RITE) Project site in New York City's East
River. The RITE Project activity is a technology
demonstration of Verdant Power's
fifth-generation tidal power system
and its novel TriFrame mounting system,
the company told POWER.
In January, Verdant said that the onehalf
scale demonstration-of a gridconnected
array of three, five-meter
diameter rotor tidal power turbines-has
performed at 100% availability, producing
100 MWh in only 85 days of continuous
operation. That's " a record for
marine energy production in the United
States, " the company noted. " This high
reliability is critical to cost-competitive
green energy. "
China is quietly marking substantial
progress, too. In April, the China Three
Gorges Corp., operator of its namesake
dam, which remains the largest hydropower
project in the world, installed a
4. As a part of the ongoing commissioning
work of its DG100 tidal kite system in
Vestmannasund, Faroe Islands, leading marine
energy developer Minesto has reached
the milestone of delivering electricity to the
Faroese grid facilitated by a power purchase
agreement with the utility company SEV.
Courtesy: Minesto
POWER | April 2021
http://www.powermag.com
POWER April 2021

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