Funds keep flowing into Welsh tidal power scheme

The fledgling marine energy sector in Wales has taken another step forward after the Carbon Trust awarded £390,000 to Tidal Energy Limited to help support environmental surveys for its flagship project.

Tidal Energy announced yesterday that it has secured a grant from the Carbon Trust's Entrepreneurs Fast Track Programme that will help fund environmental monitoring work at its consented Ramsey Sound demonstration site off the Pembrokeshire coast.

The news came just weeks after the company bagged £11m in new funding from the European Regional Development Fund and investors Eco2 Ltd to manufacture and deploy the 1.2MW DeltaStream device.

Chris Williams, development director at Tidal Energy, explained that the monitoring will also help other marine energy developers in Wales.

"The Welsh government believes that the deployment of tidal and wave devices off the nation's 1200km coastline could provide as much as 4GW of clean, predictable electricity by as early as 2025," he said in a statement.

"This represents a huge opportunity but, in order to achieve this goal, we must understand more about how devices interact with the marine environment... By making data available to the market, we hope others can benefit from our research."