Wave Hub is being developed by the South West Regional Development Agency (RDA) and will be "the world's largest" test site for wave energy technology. It will be a grid-connected socket on the seabed, 16 kilometres off the coast of Cornwall in South West England, to which wave power devices can be connected and their performance evaluated.
The £42 million (€51 million) project will be connected to the shore via a 25 kilometre long, 1,300-tonne subsea cable that will be laid from the beach at Hayle, on the north Cornish coast, out to the Wave Hub site by the cable laying ship Nordica.
Today's operation involves floating the end of the cable ashore from the Nordica, which will be stationed two kilometres offshore, and winching it to the top of the beach to a pre-constructed pit where it will be joined to onshore cables connected to a new electricity substation.
Once the cable is in place it will be buried on the beach to a depth of around two metres using a special machine that blasts a trench in the sand using high pressure water jets, burying the cable as it goes. The machine will continue offshore for a distance of two kilometres, and will be monitored by divers.
The 33,000 volt cable has been manufactured in one continuous length by JDR Cables and is made up of six copper cores, 48 fibre optic cables, two layers of steel wire armouring and an outer polymer sheath. It is 16 centimetres in diameter. The cable and the hub itself were transported to the site from Hartlepool last month.
"This is a momentous day because it marks the start of Wave Hub's installation and a new chapter in the development of the marine renewables industry, not just in the UK but around the world,” commented the RDA's Wave Hub general manager, Guy Lavender.
A world first
"Wave Hub is a genuine world-first and will be a huge asset to companies striving to harness the vast power of the oceans, cutting greenhouse gas emissions and tackling climate change. Combined with the research expertise already in South West England, we believe we have a compelling offer that will help wave device developers make the leap to full commercialisation of their technologies."
The cable operation at Hayle, which is being carried out by specialist contractor CTC Marine Projects, is set to take about two days. Once the cable is securely onshore the Nordica will head 16 kilometres out to sea to the Wave Hub site, laying the cable on the seabed as it goes. This will take around five days, claims the RDA.
Following this, the 12 tonne Wave Hub will then be lowered to the seabed in about 50 metres of water.
The Nordica will then head to the port of Falmouth on the south coast of Cornwall to pick up a 45 tonne underwater tractor that will bury the subsea cable for a further five kilometres offshore.
In the autumn, Wave Hub will undergo a series of tests in preparation for welcoming its first wave energy devices next year.
Wave Hub is a major marine renewables infrastructure project that will create an electrical ‘socket’ to which groups of wave energy devices will be connected. There are four berths available at Wave Hub, each covering two square kilometres. Wave Hub will have an initial maximum capacity of 20 MW (enough electricity to power approximately 7,000 homes) but has been designed with the potential to scale up to 50 MW in the future. The first wave energy devices are expected to be deployed in 2011.
For additional information:
____________________________________________________________________
