Aegir Wave Power, a joint venture between Swedish utility Vattenfall AB and Pelamis Wave Power, have today secured an agreement for lease from The Crown Estates for their wave farm project off Shetland.
Aegir has been pursuing the possibility of wave farm development in the Shetland’s waters since 2009. Having reached agreement with The Crown Estate, Aegir is now clear to move forward with survey and evaluation work, to secure necessary consents and permissions for development from Marine Scotland. The scheme starts with a 10 megawatt (MW) project using Pelamis machines in an area of sea off the south west of Shetland.
Speaking about the announcement; Project Manager Andrew Scott of Pelamis, said: “Aegir has already invested a significant amount in this project to date, so we are delighted to secure this milestone for the project. There remains a lot of work to be completed over the next two years, and we look forward to completing this in close communication and collaboration with the local Shetland communities. We realise this has to make sense for them too.”
As part of investigation work allowed by today’s announcement, Aegir is planning the deployment of wave measurement buoys off the coast in the coming weeks to determine exactly how rich the energy resource is off Shetland’s south west coast. Aegir will also be performing a broad program of environmental surveys, all of which will go toward assessing the benefits and implications of a decision to develop, which is currently planned to be taken in 2015.