Cardiff tidal lagoon could see £1.75 bln in turbine orders

Tidal Lagoon Power, the developer behind Swansea Bay tidal lagoon, said its second tidal lagoon project off Cardiff is likely to trigger £1.75 bln ($2.7 bln) in tidal turbine orders, Bloomberg reports.

The proposed lagoon, between Cardiff and Newport, is planned to have the capacity between 1.8 GW and 2.8 GW, with the annual output of 4 TW/h to 6 TW/h. It will power approximately 1.5 million households in the UK.

Plans for Tidal Lagoon Cardiff include up to 90 turbines set within a 22 km breakwater that will enclose an area of around 70 km2 with an average tidal range of 9.21 m.

For comparison, £1 bln Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project will comprise 16 tidal turbines, and have the capacity of 320 MW with a design life of 120 years. Its net annual power output is expected to be over 500 GW/h.

“We know exactly how much the waters are going to rise and waters are going to fall because of the dance between planet Earth and the moon. In Cardiff, the next lagoon after Swansea, we only have to build double the wall length,” Mark Shorrock, CEO of Tidal Lagoon Power, was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.

Image: TLP