UK
"IT Power has considerable experience with the technological and practical issues associated with renewable energy development, carbon emission reduction and rural electrification projects. Since its formation in 1981, IT Power has completed over 1000 projects in over 100 countries."
IT Power (UK) operates a quality management system which is certified to BS EN ISO 9001:2000
IT Power’s approach to R&D has been to act as Technical Incubator and Innovator of Renewable Energy Technologies, providing a comprehensive range of services. IT Power's excellent track record in R&D is unprecedented. IT Power has undertaken R&D across a broad range of Renewable Energy Technologies including wind, hydro, PV wave and tidal. IT Power has been successful in taking very early ‘proof of concept’ fundamental research stage technologies through to pre-commercial demonstration where these technologies have been successful in raising investment to continue their success.
Understanding the R&D cycle and its requirements at each stage is key to the success of any technical innovation. IT Power has both technical and project management experience from fundamental research to large scale pre-commercial demonstration of Renewable Energy Technologies. IT Power has been instrumental in establishing strong collaborative partnerships, identifying strategic suppliers and securing funding through grant and private investment. This combined with its strong technical skills and project management has enabled several technologies move closer to commercial realisation.
Recently, IT Power has undertaken pioneering R&D in the ocean energy sector and has been leading the commercialisation of Ocean Energy systems, examples of which are provided here:
Seaflow
In 1998, IT Power started the pioneering development of the Seaflow ‘marine current turbine’. The Seaflow project was an evolutionary development of earlier IT Power projects, including a floating zero-head hydro power unit designed for water pumping in Sudan and a tethered tidal turbine deployed in Loch Linnhe in Scotland. IT Power led the technical development of the Seaflow project and took the role of overall project manager. It formed a new company, Marine Current Turbines, to act as the development vehicle and IPR holder. The outcome of the Seaflow project, a 300kW two blade horizontal axis turbine, was the world's first pilot project for the exploitation of marine currents on a commercial scale and was installed off the north coast of Devon in summer 2003. Marine Current Turbines is now a successfully established enterprise, independent of IT Power, and is taking the technology forward.
OWEL
IT Power joined forces in 2003 with Offshore Wave Energy Limited (OWEL) to assist in the development of a novel wave energy converter (WEC). This floating WEC, designed to take advantage of the high energy density of deep water ocean waves, comprises a platform of a series of side-by-side ducts, open to incoming waves at one end. The first phase, supported by a DTI SMART award, involved mathematical modelling of the WEC, in parallel with tank testing of a 1.8m long, 1/100 scale model. IT Power worked on the commercialisation of the technology. The second phase, supported by the Carbon Trust, has involved IT Power undertaking comprehensive Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling of the WEC and the design and testing of a 15m long, 1/10 scale model in the New and Renewable Energy Centre (NaREC) wave tank at Blyth in the north of England. The current development phase will optimise the performance, the main structure and detail the balance of system such as turbo machinery, mooring arrangement, control and auxiliary requirements. Ocean energy experts at IT Power have extensive expertise in Computational Fluid Dynamic modelling, detailed hydraulics, mechanical systems and electrical design and provide development and testing services.
Pulse Tidal
IT Power continues its involvement with the development of tidal stream energy devices by leading a £2M project, part funded by the UK Department of Trade and Industry and by the UK energy company npower, to develop and install a prototype tandem oscillating foil machine. IT Power is leading a development consortium, assembled for the project, which includes Pulse Tidal (the originators of the technology), BMT, Econnect and a well known heavy engineering specialist.
The immediate objective is to install the prototype in the Humber in 2008 and to gather operational data in a marine environment. The tandem oscillating foil concept offers many advantages over existing tidal stream technology, allowing the generator and gearbox to be out of the water and maximising the area that can be swept in a given depth of water. This makes the technology particularly suitable to shallow tidal flows, offering smaller support structures and cheaper installation costs than many competing systems.
Selected Projects:
