Simec Atlantis has secured a grant from the Scottish Government to finance the next phase of the MeyGen tidal power array’s development.
The £1.5m (€1.6m) grant, from the £10m Saltire Tidal Energy Fund, will be used to design, procure, install, connect and commission technology for connecting multiple turbines to a single export cable, to reduce costs of tidal power generation.
The subsea hub and connection infrastructure uses the design of the Atlantis turbine wet mate connection system, to support “rapid and automatic” connection and disconnection of power and communication infrastructure offshore without intervention, according to Atlantis.
As a result of the grant award, Atlantis will be awarded a £2.4m engineering, procurement and construction contract for the delivery and installation of the subsea hub by the MeyGen project company on the MeyGen project site in Pentland Firth, Scotland.
The hub, which will be assembled and tested in Scotland, will be installed later this year.
Atlantis chief executive Tim Cornelius said: “We are very grateful and appreciative of the Scottish Government’s continued support for tidal stream energy by awarding this grant to help fund MeyGen’s ongoing expansion.
“The subsea hub we have designed and developed is a key part of our overall cost reduction strategy for tidal power generation.
“I would also like to personally thank our dedicated marine energy team for their hard work bringing this project to fruition.
“The next phase of MeyGen, which will supply ocean energy to a large data centre to be built in Scotland, requires us to deliver cost competitive energy to our future customers and the use of subsea hubs to reduce the number of export cables required to deliver this power from the 40 2MW turbines we plan to install is central to our plans.”