Oyster producing electricity after refit

Aquamarine Power has announced initial electrical power production from its Oyster 800 wave energy converter following the machine’s recent return to service.

During the summer Oyster 800, located at the European Marine Energy Centre site at Billia Croo, underwent a major refit where new components including accumulators, valves, cables and subsea instrumentation connectors were replaced.

The company announced last week that the machine has been producing power over the past two weeks in a series of controlled tests.

“We are continuing to test the safety systems of the plant and are slowly building up power production. In 60 hours of operations we have produced 6MWh of power,” said Martin McAdam, CEO Aquamarine Power.

“We averaged about 100kW output and had a peak output of 435kW. Our longest continuous period of controlled power output was 22hours.”

“So far all of the replacement kit on the machine has performed as expected – but it is early days,” he added.