Offshore contractor appointed for Wave Hub

19 May 2010

The South West RDA (Regional Development Agency) has announced the appointment of CTC Marine Projects as offshore contractor for the pioneering Wave Hub marine energy project.

CTC Marine, which is part of the global Trico Marine Group headquarted in Texas, will handle the load out and installation of Wave Hub’s 25km armoured subsea cable, and the deployment of the hub itself on the seabed in 50m of water.

The £7 million contract was awarded following a competitive tender and was announced at today’s All Energy exhibition and conference in Aberdeen.

Wave Hub is creating the world’s largest test site for wave energy technology by building a grid-connected socket on the seabed, 16 kilometres off the coast of Cornwall, to which wave power devices can be connected and their performance evaluated.

The £42 million project has been developed by the South West RDA (Regional Development Agency) and is a cornerstone of its strategy to develop a world class marine energy industry in South West England.

Jim Price, Wave Hub’s head of procurement at the South West RDA, said: “The award of this contract is a significant milestone for Wave Hub and it means we’re all systems go for deployment this summer. The CTC team has already carried out some onshore surveys at Hayle and will be fully mobilised next month.”

Daryl Lynch, managing director of CTC Marine, said: “We are delighted to be involved in this prestigious project and look forward to bringing CTC’s offshore management and subsea engineering experience to Wave Hub.”

CTC Marine, based in Darlington, County Durham, will be responsible for laying the 1,300 tonne cable, and deploying the 12 tonne Wave Hub some 16 kilometres offshore.

The operation will include burying the cable on the beach at Hayle where it comes ashore and for the first six kilometres offshore using a 45-tonne underwater trenching machine that crawls along the seabed, burying the cable as it goes using a high-pressure jet of water.

Further out to sea, where the seabed is more rocky, the cable will be held in place by a combination of rocks and 176 concrete ‘mattresses’ measuring six metres by three metres and weighing up to four and half tonnes each.

Wave Hub is being funded with £12.5 million from the South West RDA, £20 million from the European Regional Development Fund Convergence Programme and £9.5 million from the UK government.

An independent economic impact assessment has calculated that Wave Hub could create 1,800 jobs and inject £560 million in the UK economy over 25 years. Almost 1,000 of these jobs and £332 million could be generated in South West England.

Ends

Notes to Editors

Images: of Wave Hub and the cable can be downloaded at www.2daymedia.com/fotoweb/linkgen.asp?linkid=WaveHub1_201041131257283

Film: of Wave Hub and the subsea cable under construction is available here: www.youtube.com/southwestrda

You can follow Wave Hub’s progress on Twitter (@wavehub) and on Facebook.

The South West RDA works for and promotes a modern, stronger and more resilient economy across South West England. Our work involves creating better jobs, successful businesses, more prosperous cities, towns and villages within an economy that uses less carbon and will still be thriving in 20, 50 and 100 years time.

Wave Hub is a major marine renewables infrastructure project that will create an electrical ‘socket’ on the seabed in some 50 metres of water around 16kms (10 miles) off the coast of Cornwall in South West England and connected to the National Grid via a subsea cable. Groups of wave energy devices will be connected to Wave Hub and float on or just below the surface of the sea to assess how well they work and how much power they generate before being commercially produced and deployed. There are four berths available at Wave Hub, each covering two square kilometres. Wave Hub will have an initial maximum capacity of 20MW (enough electricity to power approximately 7,000 homes) but has been designed with the potential to scale up to 50MW in the future. The project will be built in the summer of 2010 with the first wave energy devices expected to be deployed in 2011.

Legal agreements have been signed with leading renewable energy company Ocean Power Technologies Limited to take the first berth at Wave Hub using its PowerBuoy wave energy converter. Images of PowerBuoy can be downloaded at www.flickr.com/photos/southwestengland. Discussions are ongoing with other device developers.

JDR Cable Systems Ltd has been appointed to manufacture the armoured 25 km (16 mile) 33kV cable and is overseeing the manufacture of the hub assembly for Wave Hub at its factory in Hartlepool in a contract worth £7.6 million. The cable will weigh 1,300 tonnes. The hub will be about the size of a van and will sit on the seabed. It will split the main cable linking it to the National Grid on shore into four 300m cables to which groups of wave energy devices can be attached and monitored for how they perform.

Powermann Ltd of Poole in Dorset has been appointed to handle the £1 million onshore electrical works that will connect Wave Hub to the UK’s National Grid network, and a new electricity sub-station at Hayle is being built by Dawnus Construction.

In Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly the Convergence Programmes are made up of European Regional Development Fund (£347 million) and European Social Fund (£153 million). Convergence Programmes will run until 2013 and follow the successful Objective One Programme and prior to that Objective 5b. For further information see: www.convergencecornwall.com. Convergence helpline telephone: 0800 0280120.

For more information contact our Press Office on 01392 229389.