This Is Guernsey

By Nick Mann

MARINE CURRENT TURBINES remains confident it can bring commercial tidal power to Guernsey despite a delay in getting its latest project moving. Guernsey Electricity has an equity stake in MCT, which believes it is years ahead of other manufacturers in the field.

MCT technical director Peter Fraenkel was brought to the island yesterday by the Channel Islands Group of Professional Engineers.

The company has built SeaGen, which Mr Fraenkel said was the precursor to commercial technology.

‘It should have been installed earlier this year but we had difficulty tracking down a contractor to do the work, primarily because of the installation of offshore wind turbines,’ he said.

The turbine is set to be installed in Strangford Narrows, Northern Ireland.

‘We are aiming for March next year, although we don’t have a firm date for that,’ he said.

‘After we’ve installed it we’re taking on a project to install the first farm - 10.5MW, with seven machines - in two or three years’ time. We’re still hopeful of doing a project at some stage in the waters around Guernsey, which obviously do have potential.’

He added that Guernsey Electricity had been extremely supportive.

There was a lot of interest in the island about what MCT was doing, he said.

‘We hope that it will lead to a real project in the long term,’ added Mr Fraenkel.

‘Other companies claim to have tidal turbines but, in reality it’s something that’s yet to appear - it’s models,

artists’ impressions or very small devices.’

To be commercially viable, he said, a turbine needed to generate at least one megawatt because of the overheads involved when working at sea.

SeaGen is predicted to produce 1.2MW.

‘We don’t think anybody else is likely to have a machine of that size for two or three years. Although we’re delayed, we’re still well ahead.’

He said there was more energy potential in the sea around Guernsey than could be used by the island, leaving the potential of exporting to Jersey and France. ‘It might be a new industry.

‘The whole point is that technically, SeaGen is commercial technology - it’s the prototype commercial machine. With our experience because of this, we’re going to try to value-engineer it to get the costs down - clearly, with the first one you have to be cautious with the design,’ he said.

He cast some doubt on the technology being pursued in Alderney by competitor OpenHydro, in conjunction with Alderney Renewable Energy.

Mr Fraenkel said the turbines needed to be at least 300sq. metres to be economically sound.

Those set to be installed in Alderney are about a tenth of that, he said.

It is also only a third of the size of a machine MCT installed four years ago.

‘I’d say it is not up to the stage we were at then,’ he said.