Scotland plans “big push” towards European grid connection

newenergyfocus.com
30-06-09

The Scottish Government is planning a "big push" to establish an offshore grid network in the North Sea, as part of its aim to export electricity directly to Europe.

Speaking at the Second International Wave Energy Summit in London today, Lynn Vallance, head of the offshore renewables team in the Scottish Government, explained that it saw its proposal for an underground network of cables between itself, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands as one of its main objectives for the country in the renewables sector.

Originally announced in November last year (see this New Energy Focus story), the 'super-grid' would potentially allow the easy transfer of renewable energy among northern European countries, however, plans for the proposed network preclude England despite its extensive North Sea coastline.

The announcement comes as part of plans by the Scottish Government, which possesses 25% of Europe's tidal power energy potential and 10% of Europe's wave energy potential, to establish itself as an exporter of renewable energy across the continent and not just to the UK.

Ms Vallance said: "We are doing lots and lots of work in terms of pushing this sector forward for Scotland. The big push is off shore supply grids, whereby we will not just act as an exporter of renewable energy to the UK markets but also be shipping it to Europe."

Addressing the delegates at the event, Ms Vallance gave an overview of the current status of Scottish work in the field of renewable energy and said that its Marine Renewable Energy Roadmap was set to be published next month, which will assess where the Government is in relation to its goals for 2020.

Saltire
In addition, Ms Vallance defended the timescale currently in place for companies and researches to win the Saltire Prize, which is a £10 million grant to anybody able to successfully engineer a project capable of producing 100GW of energy over a continuous period.

Simon Grey, chief executive of Alness Ross-shire-based AWS Ocean Energy, asked if the current timescales for the project, which sets a deadline of operation as April 2015, were "set in stone" as he said companies "just don't have the time" to be able to compete for the prize under these deadlines.

Ms Vallance said the timescales for the Prize, which was said to have attracted 100 registrations of interests in April of this year (see this New Energy Focus story), were currently being looked at but tight deadlines would help accelerate delivery of technology. Responding to Mr Grey, she said: "We are trying to come up with time scales that are challenging and ambitious but they have to be ultimately achievable."

Commitment
Also speaking at the event, Trevor Raggatt, deputy director of marine energy and operations innovation unit of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), explained the UK Government was very much committed to support for the renewable energy sector and wanted to capitalise on the opportunity for the UK to become a "genuine world leader" in the field.

He said: "Between the UK government and the Scottish Government we are genuinely committed to the renewables sector and the idea of getting from where we are - at about 1.5% renewable energy generation to 20% in five years. "It looks like a heck of a challenge but it is a challenge that we as a government are committed to and we are committed to doing right and going forward from 2020 to 2030/2050 to meet the challenging climate change and carbon targets. We are committed to renewable energy," added Mr Raggatt.

Mr Raggatt also took the opportunity to explain that the Marine Research Deployment Fund (MDRF) could soon look to help finance projects having yet to issue any money from its £50 million budget. The MDRF was established in 2004 to help fund to wave or tidal power energy generation projects that have completed their initial research and development and are ready to commercially deploy.

He said: "We haven't given any cash out yet but we are getting to a stage now where we are seeing real sector movements towards marine deployment and what I can see is when you are ready for commercial deployment and say we have got a viable technology here, the MRDF is there to begin funding for those projects and help these projects through the initial difficulties of getting up and running." In addition, Mr Raggatt said that the government had begun work on the Strategic Environment Assessment for English and Welsh waters and claimed that it would hopefully be published in the next few months.