Wave Hub is the name of one of the world’s biggest wave energy generation test site. It has been installed off Cornwall’s northern coast and is the UK’s first offshore wave energy site. Wave Hub will allow four wave energy generator systems to be evaluated simultaneously. The systems also have a total capacity of 20 MW.
The project which has been valued at a price of about $64 million, is composed of a sub-station at Hayle in Cornwall, from which a cable has now been mounted under the sand dunes and across the sea bed to the wave generation area 16 km offshore, where the energy generators will be placed. There are four tail cables that can be connected to a different wave energy conversion device.
To keep the undersea cables fixed, about 80,000 tonnes of rock have been placed over them. Ocean Power Technologies Limited (OPT) will be the first wave generator developer connecting its PowerBuoy wave energy converter to one of the tail berths by the end of next year.
According to the minister for energy and climate change Lord Hunt, the UK’s south west is a perfect location for the Wave Hub because it is the country’s first low-carbon economic area.
[Source: Physorg]
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4046 total comments so far. What's your opinion ?
Finally, we are starting to realise the energy we can be harnessed by that blue stuff which surrounds our island.Our position in the world gives the UK huge potential in the renewable energy sector, its just a shame its taking so long for us to realise it.
It's about time. It seems crazy that this country has taken so long to come round to the idea of generating power from waves, considering we have more of this resource than just about anywhere else in the northern hemisphere. We should be leading the world with this technology.
