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Linklater's Scotland: power from waves
Magnus Linklater
Columnist, Scotland on Sunday
This article,
which was originally published in the Spectrum section of
Scotland on Sunday on 10th July 2005, is reproduced on Land-Care
with the kind permission of the author and the newspaper
Filed 11 Jul 05
©Magnus Linklater
SOME time in the next few weeks, George
Leslie will watch, with anxious pride, a strange contraption trundling
round Lerwick harbour, towed by a tractor. Behind it, a cylinder,
balanced on wheels, will begin to turn. And then, from a tube at
the end, it will begin to spurt a column of water. Higher and higher
it will go, until, Leslie hopes, it reaches 30 feet into the air.
And if it does that, he will know that his dream has come true.
He will have made a machine that can harness the energy of the ocean’s
tides. “This,” he says with disarming frankness, “is
either something absolutely massive - or it’s a lemon.”
Producing energy from the sea is the alchemy
of the 21st century. With fossil fuels a declining resource, almost
every country with a coastline is exploring the possibilities. Millions
of pounds are being invested in experiments around the world. France,
Canada and Russia have built power stations using the tide, but
they are unwieldy and inefficient. Successful experiments have been
conducted in Orkney using wave energy, but they are still at an
early stage. Maybe, just maybe, George Leslie has the answer.
Now 70, he is an inveterate inventor, the
kind that Britain was once famous for. Working from the study of
his big rambling house in Kirkwall, he has, down the years, come
up with ingenious ideas to help farmers dry their crops, pump oil
ashore, and find ways of scaring seals away from the salmon nets
of Orkney fishermen. But this, he admits, is the biggest project
of them all.
In the race to turn wave eneregy into usable
electricity Scottish inventors working in Shetland and Orkney
are ahead of the game - so why have they had to turn to the Portuguese
to fund the crucial next stage?
The Department of Industry, which ran a
multi-million-pound competition for new ideas in wave or tide energy,
has dismissed Leslie’s invention. It wrote and told him so,
in that dead, bureaucratic language which showed that it had neither
studied nor properly understood his idea. For, amateur though he
is, Leslie has the mind of a true physicist, and he has worked out,
in meticulous detail, exactly how his device will work.
It is based on a complex system of expansion
and compression coils containing a mixture of air and water, capable
of producing high levels of energy. The coils are contained within
a steel cylinder fitted with fins, which would float just below
the surface of the water, anchored to the sea-bed by chains, and
rotated by the force of the tides. Leslie has already demonstrated,
on a small, home-made model, that it can produce pressure sufficient
to drive a jet of water vertically into the air. The larger the
machine, the greater the power.
Although the DTI has rejected his invention,
Shetland Islands Council has backed him with sufficient funds to
make a working model. The Leslie Pump is big enough to generate
10 kilowatts, enough to power a large house. It will be tested in
Lerwick harbour. “The great value of my device is that it has
no moving parts,” he told me. “Therefore, you can make
it as big as you want, and it is extremely reliable. I am building
a model big enough to pump seven tons of water 30 feet into the
air. I reckon that just £200,000 worth of steel would be enough
to produce 1,000 kilowatts of energy.”
Since this is roughly what a small wind
turbine produces, and since the government is offering three times
the price per unit of power produced from tidal energy as it does
for wind, the benefits, in terms of both alternative energy and
cash yield, are dramatic. Shetland has its eye on the potential
of the great tidal race between Unst and Yell in the north. George
reckons that this alone could produce the energy equivalent of a
nuclear station. The stakes are high.
A brilliant invention, tested successfully in Britain, will
be exploited elsewhere - it is a grimly familiar story
Round the coast from the Orkney harbour
town of Stromness, a very different approach is being taken. Here
there is all the hi-tech investment that George Leslie lacks. Emec,
a company set up to conduct experiments in wave energy, has established
four offshore test berths at Billia Croo, a windswept bay which
has been described as “probably the best location in Europe
for testing commercial-scale devices”. Helped by an investment
of £6 million from the DTI, Highland and Islands Executive
and the Scottish Executive, Emec has laid sophisticated cables,
installed a carefully landscaped substation to convert wave power
into electricity, and opened the facility to a Scottish company,
Ocean Power Delivery.
OPD has already succeeded in generating
power which has actually been fed into the grid, using a remarkable
device known as Pelamis, the Latin word for sea-snake. A series
of large tubes, linked together, float on the surface of the water,
rising and falling with the waves, generating power which is then
transmitted via the cables along the sea-bed and into the substation.
Andrew Mills, Emec’s managing director,
is excited by what has been achieved so far. “It is a milestone,”
he says. It means that Britain is, for the moment, ahead of the
game in harnessing wave power, a world leader in one of the most
competitive areas of alternative energy. But there is a sting in
the tail. The next, crucial stage of commercial development will
take place, not in Scotland, but in Portugal. The Portuguese government
wants OPD to build 30 of its machines and begin generating power
off the Atlantic coast. A brilliant invention, tested successfully
in Britain, will be exploited elsewhere - it is a grimly familiar
story.
Ocean Power Delivery's Pelamis device has already been used
to generate electricity which has been fed into the grid
The early period of any major industrial
development requires substantial backing. So far neither the UK
government, nor Scottish Power nor the Scottish Executive has been
able to offer OPD the funding guarantees it needs to make the crucial
jump from experiment to actual production. The Portuguese government
is not so hesitant. It has decided that, if any country is to become
a world leader in sea energy, it is to be Portugal, not Britain,
and it has sent OPD a letter of intent which contains strong enough
guarantees to lure it away from Scotland for the next phase of development.
“This is the fear,” says Mills, “that other countries
will make it more attractive for commercial developers.”
Richard Yemm, OPD’s managing director,
admits he is disappointed. “It is a bit of a pain,” he
said. He believes that the potential benefit for Scotland would
be enormous if this country were to become a world leader in manufacturing
wave machines. “When Denmark cornered the market in wind turbines,
it generated 25,000 jobs. We could virtually double that here. But
Portugal has decided it wants to be the Denmark of wave power, and
so far that’s the way it seems to be going.” Although
the first three machines will be built in Scotland, thereafter the
work will be done in Portugal.
There is, however, a window of opportunity.
If, by the end of this year, the Scottish Executive can come up
with the financial guarantees that OPD needs, Scotland would still
be in with a chance. It does seem a risk worth taking. If you decide
to put public money into a world-beating experiment in alternative
energy, it seems absurd not to take the next crucial step of exploiting
the results.
Both Mills and Yemm pay tribute to the backing
they have had so far from the Executive, but now that the technology
is there, it requires an extra surge of political will to make it
happen.
Over in Shetland, George Leslie feels exactly
the same. He will watch his tidal pump trundle round Lerwick harbour,
and, as the water spouts higher, he hopes to able to tell the DTI,
with ill-concealed triumph, to “stuff it down their stupid
throats”.
©Magnus Linklater
References
This article:
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/spectrum.cfm?id=755492005
Earlier articles in the series
 1.
Linklater, Magnus (2005). Linklater's Scotland. Scotland on Sunday
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See SOCIAL/ECONOMIC/POLITICAL Homepage, filed 24 Mar 05,
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Linklater, Magnus (2005). Linklater's Scotland - Pete Irvine, impresario.
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Linklater, Magnus (2005). Linklater's Scotland - the heroism of
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11.
Linklater, Magnus (2005). Edinburgh pronounced World City of Literature.
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12.
Linklater, Magnus (2005). Scotland's fish-farms.
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Linklater, Magnus (2005). Scotland's budding tennis talent.
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Linklater, Magnus (2005). G8 summit at Gleneagles.
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Linklater, Magnus (2005). Windfarms in the Highlands.
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Linklater, Magnus (2005). Sit Timothy Clifford.
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Finis
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