‘Tidal lagoons mean cheaper power than wind or nuclear’

  Tidal lagoons with large volumes of water will make electricity cheaper than nuclear power and offshore wind. That’s according to Mark Shorrock, Chief Executive Officer of Tidal Lagoon Power […]

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Tidal lagoons with large volumes of water will make electricity cheaper than nuclear power and offshore wind.

That’s according to Mark Shorrock, Chief Executive Officer of Tidal Lagoon Power Limited, the company behind the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon pathfinder project.

Speaking to ELN at RenewableUK’s Wave and Tidal 2017 conference last week, Mr Shorrock explained how the project would actually work and what it would be capable of.

He said: “The tidal lagoon is a 320MW power station, it’s a U-shaped breakwater, nine kilometres of breakwater, built out into the sea and at its deepest point we have a large concrete turbine house encompassing 16 turbines.

“To give you a sense of the volumes of water, that’s five Olympic swimming pools of water per second coming through the turbines and will provide enough electricity for 155,000 homes for the next 120 years.”

He went on to explain the significance of the Hendry Review’s findings regarding tidal lagoon technology.

He said: “Charles Hendry is President of the Nuclear Institute, he’s President of the Energy Institute. This is a man steeped in energy, who started skeptical, became very much convinced and wrote a very robust report that said there is a role, both on the industrial strategy side and on the lower cost of energy side, for tidal lagoons in the UK energy mix.

“I don’t know a more august voice in the energy industry and to have had such a resounding, robust set of findings, crack on straight away with Swansea, bigger lagoons will be cost competitive with all other low carbon technologies, it’s fundamental. It’s the underpinning principle now of a decision from government.”

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