Renewable Devices Marine Ltd, says its website, has brought together world class innovation and an engineering track record in renewable energy product development, to deliver the world’s lowest cost and most environmentally sensitive marine energy, in the form of the Capricorn Marine Turbine – a tidal stream turbine intended to deliver unrivalled combination of innovation and reliability.
Renewable Devices Marine suggests two mounting methods.
The Capricorn 5 (a 50-kW turbine) and the Capricorn 125 (1.25-MW turbine) provide the lowest cost, most reliable, and most environmentally sound marine energy generation anywhere in the world.
Tidal energy is the last great untapped global energy resource available with a worldwide potential in excess of other renewable energy resources. Caused by the gravitational interaction between the earth, moon, and sun, the movement of tidal waters across the globe is highly predictable and never ending. The amount of power extractable from a tidal flow is highest when flow velocities are highest (usually by an acceleration of the flow due to the seabed or coastline), but a significant amount of energy is also available from medium flow velocity sites too.
The Capricorn 125 is capable of generating 1.25 MW.
Most tidal stream (hydrokinetic) turbines operate by placing a horizontal axis turbine into the tidal flow, where energy is extracted, much in the same was as a wind turbine operates in wind flows.
With the intelligent implementation of the right technologies, tidal energy has the potential to deliver enormous amounts of clean grid electricity. The global resource for tidal stream energy is enormous. Tidal turbines are typically deployed in water of 60 to 120-ft depth in currents exceeding 6 knots (although the Capricorn can capture the lower speed flows). Because of the difference in density between water and air, tidal stream turbines are smaller than wind turbines of the same power (in other words, produce more energy for a given rotor area).
The U.S. Dept of Energy has estimated that the total resource available from tidal generation is 250 TWh/year. To put this in context, the U.S. consumes a total of 4,402 TWh/year in electricity. So, the DOE figures would indicate that (for the USA alone), tidal power represents the potential to deliver one-sixteenth of the whole country’s annual electricity. However, this assessment only considers the higher flow sites, as these are where the largest energy yields are available. The Capricorn technology allows us to exploit lower flow sites, and so we have a significantly larger number of sites available to use, which are typically closer to the population centers, making a connection to the electrical simpler and less expensive. Therefore, with the Capricorn technology, the exploitable resource in the USA is closer to 527 TWh/year, or one-eighth of the total annual electricity usage.
Research to date which has been restricted to examining the highest velocity tidal flows worldwide has concluded that there is approximately 120 GW of tidal power available for capture. However, the innovative technologies developed for the Capricorn Marine Turbine mean that it is capable of efficient operation and energy capture at many more sites.
Renewable Devices Marine Ltd have brought together world-class innovation and a proven engineering track record in renewable energy product development, to deliver the world’s lowest cost and most environmentally sensitive marine energy, in the form of the Capricorn Marine Turbine – a unique tidal stream turbine design delivering an unrivaled combination of innovation and reliability.
The Capricorn 5 and 125 provide the lowest cost, the most reliable and the most environmentally sound marine energy generation anywhere in the world.
Filed Under: Offshore wind
