Aquamarine Power (“Aquamarine”) is pleased to announce that it has appointed one of the world’s foremost geotechnical drilling and marine construction contractors, Fugro Seacore, to install its Oyster® Wave Energy Converter (Oyster®).
After a competitive commercial tender process, the contract worth approximately £2million will see Oyster® commence its installation on the seabed at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney during summer 2009 with completion scheduled for the Autumn.
Fugro Seacore has over 30 years experience of near-shore drilling and specialist marine installation projects. Their equipment - designed and fabricated in-house - has been developed and proven over many years of world-wide use in marine civil engineering contracts and existing offshore wind farm projects. The company’s strong history provides it with excellent capability to serve the marine renewable energy markets and Aquamarine in particular.
This key appointment follows the announcement of Aquamarine’s first development agreement with Airtricity, the renewable energy development division of Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE), aimed at developing sites capable of hosting 1,000MW of marine energy by 2020.
Martin McAdam, Chief Executive of Aquamarine commented: "This is an important time for Aquamarine Power. We are installing a full scale demonstrator of our Oyster® wave device. The device works - it has been tested in the wave tanks and we have completed full scale on-shore testing. This is our baby - we want it to be installed and we want it to be installed correctly and carefully and we need a world class contractor to do that - that is why we have chosen Fugro Seacore.
We went through an extensive tendering process to ensure that we have the right contractor. It was a balance of skill and cost and in appointing Fugro Seacore, we have achieved that balance.
Fugro Seacore is one of the world's leading marine drilling and civil engineering contractors. In my experience every project has challenges. Even though we have planned this installation in great detail, I still expect there will be problems. Appointing someone like Fugro Seacore means that when problems occur we will work through the problems together and deliver a successful installation. The future of electricity generated from wave energy starts now."
Bob Jenkins, Fugro Seacore’s Managing Director added: “We are delighted to be working with Aquamarine, which we believe will be at the forefront of the upcoming revolution in marine energy. Like all projects of this nature, there are likely to be challenges to be addressed. However, we are confident that we have the necessary expertise to successfully complete the Oyster® installation this year.”