OPT sees interest for its Underwater Substation Pod | tidal today

OPT sees interest for its Underwater Substation Pod

Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) has highlighted the utility of an underwater substation device. The Pennington, New Jersey-based company says such device is often “overlooked”.

The company has developed an innovative Underwater Substation Pod (USP) as an environmentally responsible means of networking and transmitting offshore power and data to onshore electric utility grids. It can aggregate up to 10 offshore power generation devices into one common interconnection point (e.g. wave, tidal and offshore wind) for economic, undersea power transformation and data communication.

It also provides a full suite of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) capabilities, and allows the operator to remotely control electrical safety equipment.

OPT says it has created considerable intellectual property with the development of its unique pod, and as a result is attracting interest from industry players responsible application in other wave, offshore wind and tidal projects.

During the first quarter, (ended July 31), the company made progress on the manufacturing of an underwater substation pod, under contract with Iberdrola. The current phase of the contract includes building and testing the pod for use in a utility-grade OPT wave power station expected to be built at a site approximately three miles off the coast of Santoña, Spain. This device is expected to be ready for in-waterdockside testing in the coming weeks.

via OPT sees interest for its Underwater Substation Pod | tidal today.

Where the winds blow | Environment | The Observer

Where the winds blowJohn Vidal The Observer, Sunday October 19 2008 Article historyIf Britain is to generate a third of its electricity from wind power, many upland areas will be blanketed in wind farms, but people in the lowlands may be shocked to find giant pylons carrying 400,000 volts across favourite areas of the countryside.

Bringing so much wind power from Wales, the Highlands and offshore demands a £5bn-£9bn upgrade and expansion of the high-voltage grid with larger, heavier pylons, up to 220ft high, according to National Grid, the company responsible for distributing electricity.

The existing transmission lines between Scotland, England and Wales will need to be upgraded and new undersea cables could be built down the east and west coasts from Scotland.

In addition, a new transmission line will probably have to be built in mid-Wales, possibly linking with the existing grid near Shrewsbury.

Protests and delays are inevitable. In Scotland, more than 17,000 people have objected to the 137-mile Beauly-Denny pylon route which would see 600 pylons crossing the Highlands.

The last major transmission line built in Britain in the early Nineties took more than 10 years from the planning to construction stages.

Burying the cables underground is 10-25 times more costly than overhead pylons, and not economically possible, says

via Where the winds blow | Environment | The Observer