“QED Naval uses its extensive experience and sophisticated design tools and resources to help tidal project developers rapidly optimise their projects in a commercially viable way.”
Mor Energy Tidal Project
The Moralis tidal field is located off the South Stack of Holy Island, North Wales. This site is the culmination of many years work by Mentor Mon utilising circa £40m of Welsh government and EU ERDF funding to provide the necessary infrastructure in terms of onshore substation, grid connections and offshore marine licensing for up 240MW of tidal energy. This site is unique since it has invited many of the world's leading tidal developers to take a seabed lease to help demonstrate early stage tidal arrays.
QED Naval is celebrating the award of revenue support funding through the government’s CFD renewable incentive scheme as part of Auction Round 5 (AR5) announced on Friday 8th September 2023, with the potential to generate £30m GVA over the next three years.
QED Naval, through its Welsh subsidiary Mor Energy Limited, was awarded 4.5MW of tidal energy capacity, enough to power over 2,500 homes, at its Morlais site in North Wales, at a strike price of £198/MWh. The Morlais development is situated off the northwest coast of Holy Island and will have the capacity to power over 180,000 homes once fully operational.
Morlais tidal field was developed by a local, publicly owned, energy company Menter Môn Morlais Ltd and Marine Energy Wales who have worked very hard over the last decade to provide a fully consented tidal site and suitable grid connection, to deploy our Subhub tidal platform and Tocardo tidal technology.
The tidal site is split up into many berths and we have one berth, GO3, which is approximately 1 nautical mile, North West of the South Stack. It encapsulates approximately a 1 kilometre squared block of seabed and has the consented capacity of 30MW on the lease.
#tidalenergy #netzerocarbon #environment #renewables #greeninvestment #Wales
Tocardo Oosterschelde Tidal Project (OTP)
The Oosterschelde Tidal Project (OTP) is QED's flagship project run as part of the Joint Venture (JV) with Inyanga/HydroWing. It is currently the largest tidal array in operation in the world today made up of 5 x Tocardo T2 tidal turbines giving the platform a total capacity of 1.25MW.
Tocardo OTP is being run partly as a commercial project to generate revenue and partly as an R&D platform that allows Tocardo to develop the next generation technology which improves efficiency and reliability of the turbines.
A planned upgrade to the platform will be rolled out in Q2 this year which involves an a software upgrade to enable a 30% increase in performance of the turbines. Also RWZ who own the Oosterschelde storm barrier have acknowledge they given the right independent evidence that the turbines will not cause scour, then we could extend the operational tidal windows.
Tiger locations
- Ramsey Sound
- Yarmouth Tidal Test Centre (YTTC – Isle of Wight)
- Perpetuus Tidal Energy Centre (PTEC – Isle of Wight)
- Normandie Hydrolienne
- Paimpol Brehat
- Morbihan
Our Tenders
TIGER (Tidal Stream Industry Energiser)
Proving enhanced energy yield and validating cost reduction offered QED’s Subhub tidal platform. This project will also establish one of Europe’s largest tidal farms to proivde a route to market for many tidal developers.
Timescale: 2019 – 2023 (47 months)
Funder: Interreg France (Channel) England Programme
Funding: ERDF funding € 29.9 million / Total project budget € 45.4 million
Project Overview
The TIGER project will demonstrate that tidal energy is a maturing industry, capable of achieving an accelerated cost reduction pathway. The project will build cross-border partnerships to develop new technologies, test and demonstrate up to 8 MW of new tidal capacity at a number of locations around the Channel region, and use the learning from this development to make a stronger, cost-effective case for tidal energy as part of the France/UK energy mix.
The project is the largest ever to be approved not only by the France (Channel) England Programme but by any Interreg programme.
QED Naval’s Project
QED’s TIGER project is supported by a £3m ERDF funding and will validate the performance of their Subhub Community Demonstrator and costs of deployment, operations and maintenance.
As part of the TIGER project QED are developing a site in the Solent in collaboration with Yarmouth Harbour Commission. The site is located between Sconce Point and Black Rock and will be used as a development site. QED has submitted a planning application to the Marine Management Organisation to carry out performance and yield validation trials on the Subhub with the new Tocardo T1 tidal turbines. It is not intended to connect this deployment to the grid.
The final stage QED is to complete the design, engineering and procurement of their next generation Subhub technology (Gen-02) at industrial scale suitable for the Tocardo T2 and T3 tidal turbines. This will enable QED to roll out this variant in their first commercial project of 3 – 5MW, funded separately reaching a Financial Investment Decision (FID) in Q3, 2023.
Partners
Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, Cornwall, UK (Project lead)
- University of Exeter, Cornwall and Devon, UK
- University of Plymouth, Devon, UK
- University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
- Cambrian Offshore South West, Cornwall, UK
- Orbital Marine Power, Edinburgh, UK
- European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), Orkney, UK
- EDF Hydro, Rennes, France
- Normandie Hydroliennes, France
- SEENEOH, Bordeaux, France
- Bretagne Developpement Innovation, France
- Hydroquest, France
- MorbihanHydroEnergies SASU, France
- University of Caen Normandy, France
- University Le Havre Normandy, France
- University Bretagne Sud, France
- Minesto AB, Sweden
- QED Naval, Edinburgh, UK
Project website: www.InterregTiger.com
Strangford Lough
Strangford Lough offers tidal developers fantastic facilities for testing their technology with great access to the water and test sites. There are a broad range of flow rates, water depths and seabed characteristics to suit a wide range of tidal devices.
It also has access to the Queens University Marine Lab which supports the development of this sector from a technology point of view but also, importantly, from an environmental impact perspective.
QED Naval are working with local marine contractors operating out of Portaferry and Queens University Belfast (QUB) to potentially utilise their two test sites, for which they have site leases, for our long term immersion trials to determine our Operations and Maintenance strategy and to validate our platform’s performance capabilities.
QED Naval have submitted an application to lease their own area of seabed in Ballyhenry Bay which is exposed to flow rates up 2.5m/s.
The Subhub Community Demonstrator is currently located within Strangford Lough at a sheltered water anchorage site in Castle Ward Bay just off Audley’s Castle.
ETP TWEET Development
partnership between QED Naval, Edinburgh University and Scottish Government to develop state of the art tidal energy forecasting design tools to improve confidence within commercial modelling.
Project Overview
University of Edinburgh (UoE) have developed high resolution tidal flow simulations for the Sound of Islay. This allows them to define the flow inlet conditions to QED’s hydrodynamic models along with flow fluctuations (turbulence).
This work, undertaken in conjunction with the Scottish Association of Marine Science (SAMS) based in Oban, who will provide a detailed illustration of a turbulent tidal site based on real flow measurements.
This will provide the information for QED Naval’s Tidal and Wave Energy Evaluation Tool (TWEET) and optimise the design and positiondevelopment of their Subhub tidal platform for extreme turbulence sites of which Sound of Islay is a good example.
Sound of Islay Project
In collaboration with Islay Energy Trust, QED Naval has submitted an application for seabed lease within the Sound of Islay for up to 1MW of tidal energy
The intent of the Sound of Islay Community Tidal Project is to install an industrial scale Subhub platform with 8.0m tidal turbines to generate up to 1200MWhr of tidal energy from the plant. This power will be fed back to an energy storage scheme where it will serve a local industrial load.
SMART R&D
Scottish Enterprise has supported QED Naval on the commercialisation of their Subhub Tidal Platform technology with a £469,000 SMART R&D grant. This £1.9m project aims to address all the technical and commercial risks associated with Subhub technology and has culminated in the build and successful testing of the ballast system.
Project Overview
The SMART R&D project which is now complete culminated 6 years of technical and commercial development by QED Naval including the SMART Feasibility Study commencing in September 2012 and completing with the SMART R&D project in May 2019.
The key stages of this project were:
1. Feasibility studies – Assess the technical and commercial viability of the technology and market.
2. Tank Testing – Validate design tools and assess extreme combined wave and tidal loading
3. Sheltered and Open Water testing – The Operations Model to assess the stability, installation methods and develop the ballast control system. Simulate installing and recovering the Subhub in waves and tide and assess towing characteristics.
4. Detailed Design, Procurement and Manufacture – Development of structural scantlings and quality manual for design review (Sgurr Energy). Development of the manufacturing methods and build quality manual (DNV GL)
5. Commissioning, Testing, Load-out, Launch and Integration – Ballast control system is commissioned and full system testing ashore. Transport platform to the quayside. Full system integration at the quayside. MCA/MWS insurance survey.
6. Deployment and Sea trials – Demonstration of towing capabilities in rough conditions to Strangford Lough. Full ballast system performance trials to assess the installation and retrieval capabilities of the Subhub
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Our technology is ready to make a difference in the supply of sustainable renewable energy.
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