The Isle of Wight UK based developer and manufacturer of composite materials and technologies, Gurit, secured an agreement last week with Sheffield based Pulse Tidal, the tidal stream power provider, to engineer, supply tooling and manufacture the blades for Pulse Tidal Pulse Stream 1MW demonstrator.
Pulse Tidal, which specialises in sourcing energy from shallow waters, is to receive a grant of €8m from the EU’s technology research and development fund (Framework Programme 7) to enable the company to begin work immediately on developing its first fully commercial tidal energy generator. This 1MW generator will be commissioned in 2012 and will provide electricity for up to 1,000 homes.
Pulse Tidal has signed contracts with a group of international companies to form a secure supply chain for volume production. The partners are Gurit, Bosch Rexroth, Herbosch Kiere, DNV, IT Power, Niestern Sander, and the Fraunhofer Institute. These partners will provide technical support in the development and production of the commercial tidal energy machine.
Gurit will work closely with Pulse Tidal and the other consortium members throughout the process to ensure that all integration issues are solved in the early phases. Gurit will engineer, supply tooling and manufacture the blades for the Pulse Tidal Pulse Stream 1MW demonstrator. The blades will contain instrumentation that will allow verification of the actual loads for future optimisation of the structure. Gurit was selected due its experience in the wind energy, marine and offshore sectors and a shared long term goal to ensure that tidal energy technologies are efficient, scalable and cost effective.
Thomas Royle, head of strategic business development said, ‘The Pulse Stream Technology fills a unique niche in the industry to exploit both deep and shallow water sites and has now been proven at mid-scale. The concept is based on four blades of approximately 20m in length and they will be built using production blade techniques and materials to enable rapid and cost effective roll-out for the first farms of devices.’
Building on its breadth of experience gained in the marine environment, both surface and sub-sea, Gurit has expanded its interest in the emerging ocean energy market. Having been involved in this technically demanding sector for a number of years supplying structural engineering, materials technology and device prototyping services to several companies, Gurit has established a dedicated ocean energy team. This small group is especially focussed to build strategically important alliances to help the ocean energy industry reach its optimistic goals.
