Current Status
MeyGen Limited, through its technology shareholder ARC, has been actively working on the Inner Sound project since 2007. Work to date has included the following:
- Stakeholder engagement
- Initial review of flow in the whole Pentland Firth region
- Selection of Inner Sound site as optimum location
- Stakeholder engagement
- Grid review
- Initial ADCP deployment for flow analysis in the Inner Sound
- Lobbying The Crown Estate for seabed lease award process
- Initial financial modelling of project economics
- Application to The Crown Estate for a 398MW seabed lease
- Concept design of the Inner Sound project
- Refined project financial modelling
- Further ADCP flow data collection and flow analysis leading to initial turbine array layout and optimisation
- Start of environmental baseline data collection including monthly bird and mammal surveys
- Deployment of 1MW AK1000™ prototype at EMEC
- Award of 398MW Inner Sound site option to lease from The Crown Estate
- MeyGen Limited shareholder negotiations, including 15MW grid connection at Gills Bay and official formation of MeyGen Limited (October 2010)
- Ongoing stakeholder engagement and site base-line data collection
- Front end engineering design (FEED) for Phase 1 (86MW), including optimisation of turbine site layout for Phase 2.
- Environmental baseline surveys and Environmental Impact Assessment completed for Phase 1.
- 253MW of grid capacity secured.
- Phase 1 consent applications submitted to Marine Scotland Licencing Operations Team and The Highland Council (July 2012), supported by the Environmental Impact Assessment.
- Procurement strategy defined.
- Start of upgrade of Hastigrow-Gills Bay transmission lines to provide 15MW grid connection point in a new substation at Gills Bay (scheduled for July 2014 commissioning)