OT: Wave energy projects off Cornwall postponed or cancelled

[Chris Hogg]

It's just been announced that the Australian wave energy company Carnegie has cancelled its plans to test a wave-energy device at the 'Wave Hub' off the Cornish coast. An American company, Gwave, was due to install a device later this year, but that too seems to have been postponed.

The only company to get anywhere near using the facilities of the Wave Hub was Seatricity, whose device didn't produce electricity directly, but was designed to pump water under pressure several miles back to the shore to drive a turbine. Seatricity was just taking advantage of the Wave Hub's licence to operate wave energy devices at that location.

Over a two-year period, Seatricity's device was only on site for a few weeks, accumulating data on the pressures achieved by their pumping system but which was never connected to the shore. Trials were brought to an abrupt halt when the tether broke in comparatively mild weather in August 2016, close to the end of their licence period. It never experienced winter storms. Seatricity was privately funded and it's future is uncertain.

The £42M 'yellow submarine' that is the Wave Hub installed in 2010 is rapidly becoming a white elephant. Not a milliwatt of useful power has yet been transmitted to the shore, and that doesn't look likely to change any time soon.

[Brian Gaff]

We have the wrong kind of waves I expect, this is, after all England where we get the wrong kind of snow, falling leaves etc. Brian

[The Natural Philosopher]

Like all ideological lefty eco projects it obviously neeeds MORE SUBSIDY :-)

Or should that be idiotlogical?

[Chris Hogg]

I suspect the interest in wave energy has peaked. If Seatricity folds, it won't be the first. Salter's 'duck' and Pelamis come immediately to mind

.

I get the impression the Wave Hub would like to turn its attention to floating wind devices, but as that technology is now up and running off Scotland, I can't see a lot more experimental work being needed.

Still, as you say, with a few more grants and a bit more subsidy...

[Martin]

There was similar one in the The Humber in Hull. The result was the same.

[Martin]

[Chris Hogg]

Cornwall received a grant from the EU when the Wave Hub was set up, £20m, nearly 50% of the total. Seatricity were expecting an EU grant to continue their trials, but there were/are delays. Whether it fell foul of Brexit, I don't know, and I'm not sure of the current situation, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear of Seatricity's demise.

Per capita, Cornwall and West Wales have done the best from the EU, but eastern Europe benefited massively. Even Germany, not known for being poor, gets the same per capita as Western Scotland, hardly an industrial powerhouse, and per capita the bulk of the UK gets less than Germany.

I wonder who drew up the rules.

One of the old and rather run-down industrial towns at the centre of the long-dead tin mining industry, Redruth, received quite a lot and looks the better for it, as did it's neighbour, Camborne. So you might think it surprising that Cornwall voted to leave, although the EU fishing policies probably had a lot to do with that. There's a certain amount of ill-feeling down here about the recent agreement to continue with the existing rules until the end of the transition period.

[Brian Gaff]

I think people underestimate the problems of getting something rugged enough to stand the storms yet sensitive enough to turn chaotic wave motion into some physical work.

I doubt very much that it has a lot to where it is, but I see that the costs in looking after offshore wind farms is going up due to the conditions prevailing out there.

A person was having a whinge on a phone in the other night about his solar cells. Apparently they have been fitted to his roof with a space beneath them and the roof, which as could be predicted is now home to the local pigeons who come out and shit all over the cells, apparently. Very nice. Brian

[alan_m]

Just wait until they start laying eggs in their new home.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I can't see them getting what they want at the end of the transition period either. The idea that lots of large fishing ports will reappear around the coast is just pie in the sky. Fishing is vastly more efficient than it was when we went in to the EEC, and therefore needs vastly fewer people and vessels to catch fish. Controls will still be required to manage the fish stocks, something the EU was very successful at compared with efforts in some other areas of the world which completely failed and have left significant oceans with no edible fish.

It seems to me fairly obvious that if we want to sell fish to the EU, that will be in exchange for EU fishing rights. There isn't a big enough UK fish market to support fishing in UK waters without fish prices falling through the floor (UK are simply not big consumers of fish).

Lastly, the fishing economy and the number of people involved are way too small to be able to wield any economic power if the EU were to offer even a small arrangement for something like financial/insurance industry arrangements which would bring many orders of magnitude more economic benfits to the UK than the whole fishing industry represents.

[newshound]

I know a few people in Cornwall, none in the fishing business. To my mind, their Brexit vote suggested that Cornwall is the new Norfolk.

[Rob Morley]

He could hook them up to some sort of electric bird scarer, and an automatic cleaning system ...

[Bill]

In message , Andrew Gabriel writes

There is a huge difference between ocean going fishing fleets and small local fishing businesses. For the latter it was a way of life, and that has been virtually destroyed by the EU allowing, or encouraging, industrial ships close inshore scooping up everything.

I'm surprised that, in a d i y group, finance and money are ever held up as a sole argument for anything.

With those that I know, it's the EU's management of fish stocks that has caused both resentment and lack of inshore fish.

Oh, and I have always been amazed that anyone thought they could plonk something mechanical in the sea and expect it to work for long without horrendous repair costs.

[harry]

Drivel. If the EUSSRers want fish, they'll have to come to us to get it. Their own fishing boats will be idle. Or sold to us. It will take a while to arrange I 'spect

[Jeff Layman]

I might be wrong, but looking at some houses being built on a large new estate nearby, it seemed to me that the solar panels were part of the roof, and not mounted on top of the tiles.

It seems sensible to save money on tiles which are going to be covered up anyway, but what is the physical life expectancy of solar panels compared to tiles? Will they still be weatherproof in 50+ years? I know they will no longer be working, but will they be just like very large tiles?

[Brian Gaff]

I don't think there is a season for Pigeons, they lay eggs all year around, so many are probably the young ones already. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

The glass over them is supposed to be self cleaning but obviously, according to him, the local wildfowl excrement is more sticky than most. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

A good point, I got the impression these were the kind that companies just retro fit. If I had designed a mount I think I'd have included a meshed around the edges. I'm guessing that the space left is for drainage of the water etc, though what exactly happen when we get the wrong kind of snow, is anyone's guess. I'd like to hope also that there was a standard in cells so replacements could just be screwed into place. I don't have them myself, but a friend does, I'll have to ask. He said the biggest problem is radio interference from the electronics. Brian

[Huge]

[15 lines snipped]

No Brexitard is going to get anything they thought they were, and we're all going to get f***ed in the process.

Spot on.

[Chris Hogg]

"Here's twenty thousand Cornish men will know the reason why!"

:-)