First Commercial Wave farm for Portugal

Ocean Power Delivery (OPD) will deploy unique sausage-shaped tubes off Povoa de Varzim ,Portugal creating the world's first commercial wave power plant, providing electricity to 1,500 homes from 2006.

Ocean Power Delivery (OPD) will build the wave farm about five kilometers (3.1 miles) off Portugal's northern coast, near Povoa de Varzim, OPD's Norwegian backer Norsk Hydro said.

Portuguese Enersis SGPS, part of the Semapa Corporation, is one of Portugal’s leading renewable energy companies with 100MW of mini hydro, 500MW of wind farms under operation/construction and a further 500MW under development.

They will install three wave power generation units with capacity of 2.25 for 8 million euros ($10.12 million), but the project could be expanded significantly
OPD's Pelamis P-750 wage energy converter is an elongated metal unit that looks like a big semi-submerged sausage, with hinged segments that rock with the sea, up and down and side to side, pumping fluid to hydraulic motors that drive generators. Based in Edinburgh, Scotland, OPD (www.oceanpd.com) has been developing the Pelamis technology for the past 7 years. Supported by the UK DTI and its investors including Norsk Hydro Technology Ventures, Sustainable Asset Management, the Carbon Trust and 3i plc, the prototype for the Portuguese machines was launched in February 2004 and is currently under test at European Marine Energy Centre, Orkney, Scotland

The power produced by the generators is fed into underwater cables and brought to land where it enters the power grid.

A 120-meter (394-foot) long prototype has been tested since February 2004 in the Orkney Islands. Norsk Hydro, the energy and aluminum group, owns 16 percent of OPD.

"The farm will...displace more than 6,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions that would otherwise be produced by conventional hydrocarbon-fueled power plants," Hydro said. Carbon dioxide is the main gas widely blamed for global warming.

A typical 30MW installation would occupy a square kilometre of ocean and provide sufficient electricity for 20,000 homes. Twenty of these farms could power a city such as Edinburgh says their website This project benefits from a special feed in tariff established by the Portuguese Government to support wave energy. The initial phase is also supported by the Demtec programme with a €1.25m grant provided by the Agência de Inovação


The deal with Enersis includes a letter of intent for a further 30 Palamis wave machines for a total of 20 megawatts before the end of 2006, subject to satisfactory performance by the initial installation, Hydro said.

"If all goes well, many additional sites producing up to a total several hundred MW could be developed along the coast," Norsk Hydro said although no costings are available for the production of electricity yet.

"We see this order as just the first step in developing the Portuguese market, which is anticipated to be worth up to a billion euros over the next 10 years," OPD Managing Director Richard Yemm said in the statement.

OPD is also in talks with Scottish Power, which has shown interest in installing a wave farm in the UK.

The European Union requires 22 percent of electricity consumption to come from renewable energy sources -- such as solar, wind and wave -- by 2010. 6% of European total demand is currently met by so called renewables.

Enersis is a unit of Portuguese cement company Semapa.

Norsk Hydro's partners in Edinburgh-based OPD are investors Sustainable Asset Management, the Carbon Trust and 3i plc. The firm also has financial support from the UK energy ministry.
A number of Portuguese organisations are currently involved in the project. These
include the Agência Portuguesa para o Investimento - API , Portuguese Wave Energy Centre , Instituto Hidrografico , and INETI .

The order follows high profile meetings held recently between British and Portuguese officials at the British Embassy in April. These were attended by the UK government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir David King, who highlighted the need for immediate action to tackle the potential impacts of climate change.