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Neptune Power’s ambitions to install up to 7000 turbines about 40 metres deep in Cook Strait to produce power from tidal flows is a step closer to realisation.
Neptune partner David Beach says the RMA process will be long and involved. “There’s a great deal of caution being applied to the project by authorities,” he says. “There are few legal guidelines and precedents on this sort of ocean work to go on.” The Department of Conservation and NIWA have taken interest in the trial project and see it as an opportunity to install their own diagnostic equipment with the turbine to study a unique area of Cook Strait. “We are also putting a lot of work in at this stage on the company infrastructure, firming up partners [off-shore], but everyone agrees that it is a very positive project,” says Beach. All going well with resource consents, Neptune Power hopes to be trialing a British-made sea turbine in the strait by the beginning of 2009 at a total cost of around $10 million. Ultimately, the company has plans for thousands of these turbines to be anchored to the seafloor 40 metres below the surface of the strait where tide flows are the strongest, and it doesn’t flow any faster than here – around three metres per second. There’s a mass flow of water equivalent to 8000 Waitaki rivers, says Beach. “Many gigawatts of power are potentially available and the necessary turbine technology is in an advance stage of development in the UK.” Extracting power from this resource also has significant cost advantages over wave generation, Neptune Power claims. “And the national electricity grid is adjacent to the strait, facilitating low-cost connection.” Neptune conservatively estimates turbine power in Cook Strait at 3.6GW for the northern zone it has designated for its turbines, and 7.2GW for the southern zone. Energy NZ Vol.1 No.2 Spring 2007
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The Christchurch-based company has applied for resource consent to trial turbines on the Wellington side of Cook Strait in the Karori rip, off Sinclear Head.