Test results which saw Aquamarine Power's Oyster® wave energy converter, successfully produce and export electricity to the UK's national grid, were announced today (27th April). The tests were carried out at the New and Renewable Energy Centre (NaREC), in the UK's north-east, with the Oyster running on a land-based full scale test rig

The tests have proved that Oyster can deliver electricity on a commercial scale, says Aquamarine. The output from a single pumping cylinder delivered over 170kW of electricity proving that a full scale device, with two pumping cylinders, will deliver well in excess of the modeled output of 350kW.

Commenting on the results Martin McAdam, Aquamarine's chief executive said that the results were proof that its system can deliver commercially viable electricity. "These tests", he said, "prove that we can have a single machine delivering up to a half a megawatt of power and that a farm of these machines can deliver utility scale power in the order of hundreds of megawatts.”

Testing commenced at NaREC in March this year and will continue until the end of April during which time Aquamarine says it will be optimising the system settings, testing different components in terms of performance and fatigue and obtaining operational experience whilst producing predicted quantities of electricity. The test rig is driven by a hydraulic power pack hired from Pelamis Wave Power. The hydraulic rams drive the Oyster cylinder to produce high pressure water which is fed into a Pelton wheel that is connected to a generator to produce electricity.

Installation of the full scale machine at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney is scheduled for this summer. Aquamarine already has an agreement with Airtricity, the renewable energy division of Scottish and Southern Energy to develop sites capable of hosting 1,000MW of marine energy by 2020 suitable for deployment of Oyster.