Atlantis Bags EU Funding for MeyGen Project

Atlantis has secured the award of €20.3 million from the European Commission for the next phase of the MeyGen tidal array project.

The funding was secured through the Horizon 2020 program for the Demotide project, which will design, build and operate a 6MW turbine array, MeyGen Phase 1B, in the Inner Sound of the Pentland Firth in northern Scotland.

MeyGen Phase 1B, also known as Project Stroma, will start construction in 2017 and first power is expected in 2018.

It will be built adjacent to the existing 6MW MeyGen Phase 1A project, which delivered first power to the grid in November last year.

Together, Phases 1A and 1B complete the foundation for full scale build out at the site, which has an awarded seabed lease for almost 400MW of installed capacity, the company explained.

The Demotide project consortium consists of Atlantis’ subsidiary Marine Current Turbines, DEME, comprising DEME Blue Energy and GeoSea, Innosea and Queen’s University Belfast.

Atlantis CEO, Tim Cornelius, said: “The Demotide project is the next significant step in delivering cost effective, reliable tidal stream generation for Europe. This project will help the tidal stream industry demonstrate reductions in the price per unit of electricity by increasing the energy yield per pound of investment. Demotide will set tidal on a path to cost parity with offshore wind by 2020.”