The European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) has said today that it hopes to have completed its standards for marine energy development by the end of March, writes Rachel Johnson.
The organisation, which is based at its wave and tidal energy test centre in the Orkneys, told New Energy Focus yesterday that it is expecting the eight of the final 12 standards to be completed by the end of this month, with the entire set completed by the end of March.
Co-ordinated by the British Standards Institute, the standards cover all aspects of marine development from the assessment of marine resource, to the decommissioning of a device at the end of its deployment period.
EMEC has been posting drafts of the standards, which have been developed by expert authors and industry figures, on its website as they have been completed.
The most recent additions include the standard for assessment of tidal resource, as well as guidelines for grid connection and certification schemes for marine energy converters, all of which were posted in January.
John Griffiths, technical director at EMEC, said: “Your average inventor with an idea for a wave or tidal machine, may be very good at some aspects of mechanical engineering and may have a very good idea about their device, but very often they have no offshore experience. Or they might know nothing about deployment in high tidal currents or in bad wave regime, so there is an awful lot that they need reminding of.”
“What we’ve tried to do is to look at all the areas that a developer in the marine industry would need to refer to. We’ve considered everything from the concept of the device, right through to when it is taken out of the water,” he added.
EMEC standards
EMEC, which insists that its role is that of an “encourager”, has been working on the standards since 2006, following calls from the industry for a set of guidelines for people wanting to develop marine energy.
So far the documents have absorbed input from around 150 people in the industry.
But organisation told New Energy Focus that the standards are intended as guidelines rather than “hard and fast” standards that need to be adhered to.
“There’s no question of enforcing them at all,” said Mr Griffiths. “People will adopt them if they think they’re good.
“A lot of the standards are draft and guidelines. Most people would say that you can’t go hard and fast and say this is a standard,” he added.
The International Electrotechnical Commission has already established a committee to set international standards for marine energy development, the first of which is expected in around three years.
EMEC has said that it hopes their standards will fill the gap between now and the international standards, and is proposing to put forward some of their own documents for international consideration.
“We encouraging as many people as possible use them,” said Mr Griffiths. “People can look at them now. The fact is that there are no other standards for marine energy, there are only bits and pieces of standards in other areas which are applicable.”
For this reason, EMEC is predicting that its own set of documents have a shelf-life of around five to seven years, by which point a complete set of international guidelines will apply.
However, Mr Griffiths added that the marine energy industry does need standards now.
“If developers they want their device to be accredited or recognised by people who might invest in it and buy it, they need to be able to test it in a way in which people will recognise as being competent and useful,” he said. “This is what we’ve tried to write into the standards.”
EMEC is a purpose-built grid-connected marine energy test centre based in the Orkneys, off the north coast of Scotland.
The first centre of its kind, it has a grid connection as well as a wave test site at Billia Croo on the western edge of the Orkney mainland and a tidal test site on the nearby Isle of Eday.
via New Energy Focus – EMEC set to complete marine energy standards next month.
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