Construction of Wave Hub ‘beach pit’ gets underway
Ocean Power Technologies Limited will take the first berth at Wave Hub using its PowerBuoy wave energy converter.
The next stage of the South West RDA’s (Regional Development Agency) pioneering Wave Hub project gets underway this week with the start of excavation work on Hayle beach in Cornwall UK.
Contractors will dig a pit to house a connecting block that will join Wave Hub’s offshore cable with onshore cables linked to a new electricity substation.
The work, which is being carried out by Dawnus Construction and will take two weeks, will involve piling metal sheets into the sand to a depth of some 5m to create a metal box 10m long and 5m wide, with a further 5m of sheet above beach level. The sand inside the box will then be excavated to a depth of about 3m.
When Wave Hub’s 25km, 1,300-tonne subsea cable is laid later this summer, it will terminate inside the beach pit and be connected to cables threaded through two ducts that have already been drilled through the sand dunes at Hayle. These cables will lead back to a substation currently being built on the other side of the dunes, and ultimately connect Wave Hub with the National Grid.
Guy Lavender, Wave Hub general manager at the South West RDA said, ‘Wave Hub’s grid connection is one of its major selling points to the global wave energy industry so this is a vital piece of work. Over the next two weeks beach users at Hayle are going to see various bits of plant and machinery at the top of the beach while the beach pit is constructed. Later this summer, once all the cables have been connected together in the pit, it will be filled in again and the sheet piling will be removed, so you’ll never know we were there.’
Wave Hub is creating the world’s largest test site for wave energy technology by building a grid connected socket on the seabed, 16km off the coast of Cornwall, to which wave power devices can be connected and their performance evaluated.
The £42 million project has been developed by the South West RDA and is a cornerstone of its strategy to develop a world class marine energy industry in South West England.
Wave Hub’s cable, which is being manufactured by JDR Cable Systems in Hartlepool, is nearing completion and the RDA has appointed CTC Marine Projects based in Darlington, County Durham to deploy the cable and hub during the summer. The substation building is largely complete and the installation of more than £1 million of electrical equipment will begin later this month.
Legal agreements have been signed with leading renewable energy company Ocean Power Technologies Limited to take the first berth at Wave Hub using its PowerBuoy wave energy converter.
Wave Hub is being funded with £12.5m from the South West RDA, £20m from the European Regional Development Fund Convergence Programme and £9.5 million from the UK government.
An independent economic impact assessment has calculated that Wave Hub could create 1,800 jobs and inject £560m into the UK economy over 25 years. Almost 1,000 of these jobs and £332m could be generated in South West England.
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