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A new type of tidal turbine blade has been manufactured in Scotland which could reduce the cost of producing tidal power.
Design engineers from the University of Edinburgh have claimed that the new 3m long blade reduces the amount of materials necessary – bringing down the weight, volume and, crucially, the cost of manufacturing.
Lead design engineer Professor Dilum Fernando said: “This is the first time this type of structure has been used in blade manufacturing. Its monolithic structure eliminates the weaker adhesive joints found in conventional rotor blades, which will make it more resilient to tidal stream conditions.”
The team is based at FastBlade, a rapid testing facility designed for tidal turbine blades at Rosyth in Fife, Scotland. The team states that the new product could provide a “step change” in the volume of tidal power which can be produced commercially.
Currently the UK contract price for tidal stream energy is around £178 per MWh, compared to £65 for offshore wind. The high generation cost is a barrier to the development of tidal energy – potentially the missing piece of a year-round, renewable energy grid.
The FastBlade team hasn’t yet supplied figures of how much the new blade could reduce the cost in MWh for tidal power, however four completed blades have been deployed at tidal power firm QED Naval’s tidal platform and are undergoing sea trials in Langstone Harbour on the south coast of England.
The University of Edinburgh team is looking for funding to carry out detailed testing of a fifth blade at FastBlade.
The blade was manufactured with Tocardo Turbines for tidal energy technology company QED Naval as part of the European Tidal Stream Industry Energiser Project known as TIGER, in a service agreement brokered by Edinburgh Innovations, the University of Edinburgh’s commercialisation service.
University of Edinburgh School of Engineering FastBlade leader Eddie McCarthy said: “This project represents a major step change in our group’s capacity to manufacture tidal blades at reasonable size scale, around 3m long, at a reasonable speed – we began the project in October 2022.
“We have found a faster, cheaper route to manufacture than the usual tidal blade fabrication process, based on an altered design – we hope the combination of improved design and optimised manufacturing process will contribute to reducing the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of tidal stream energy, with the long term goal of matching LCOE of offshore wind.”
Jeremy Smith, Managing Director of QED Naval, said: “We have deliberately demonstrated the design tools, processes and build method on our smaller T1 blade design, using a 6.3m rotor diameter, but we will be pulling these through into our T3 blades up to 14m rotor diameter. This work, and its part in the EU Interreg TIGER Project helps showcase cost savings and the benefits of tidal energy.”
A recent report from Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy found that tidal energy could provide over 6GW of energy to the UK grid by 2050.
The west coast of the UK is blessed with high tidal range and experts in the field believe that it could be a crucial contributor to the nation’s energy mix. However, there has not been much indication of support from the government for large-scale tidal range projects to date.
London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment has also reported on the opportunity for tidal stream energy to be a growth market in the UK, which could become a world specialist in the market if given greater government backing.
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