Irish firm manages €500m tidal energy project
DP Energy has previous experience in building windfarms in Ireland with the ESB and Bord Gáis.
Company director Simon De Pietro said: “We have 20 years experience in wind energy but this is just our second hydro project. We must have been finding wind projects too easy.”
The latest project sees DP Energy and DEME Blue Energy form a development consortium to add further marine energy projects to its West Islay tidal project off the Scottish coast. The project is the award of an agreement for lease from the crown estate for a 100MW tidal project off the north-west coast of Antrim at Fair Head.
Both projects have significant energy resource potential fed by the same waters flowing and ebbing between the North Atlantic and the Irish Sea.
The €500m development costs for the project come from the estimated €5m cost per megawatt. This cost is high, as the technology is still in demonstration phase.
Mr De Pietro said the company was aiming to bring down this cost to closer to €2m per megawatt by the time the project is completed.
Mr De Pietro revealed that one of the biggest issues was fixing the turbines to the sea floor in tides that can be at speeds up to 8 knots. Another big issue for the Buttevant developers was to ensure they were having a minimal impact on the environment. The company has carried out a two-year environmental study of mammals and sea birds to make sure there are no issues.
“There will be no problems with whales getting minced by rotors,” he said. “ If there was even a question of that we would not be involved in the project.”
Tidal energy is expected to be one of the growth areas in green energy, with the technology becoming increasingly commercially viable.
Despite the abundance of ocean around Ireland Mr De Pietro said that the country had very few suitable sites for commercially viable tidal energy development.
“Ireland doesn’t really have great tidal energy prospects,” he said. “You need an area where the sea is squeezed to create the velocity for the turbines. Tuskar Rock is possible but the flows are not really big enough to make it viable.”
Ireland looks more likely to benefit from wave energy. He said that the country had massive potential wave energy resource but that the technology to capture it was still about five years away.
