Company type | Public Limited Company |
---|---|
LSE: SAE | |
ISIN | SG9999011118 |
Industry | Renewable energy |
Headquarters | |
Key people | Duncan Black (Chairman) Graham Reid (Chief Executive) |
Subsidiaries | MeyGen Holdings Limited Islay Tidal Power Limited Islay Holdings Limited Tidal Power Scotland Limited Atlantis Projects Pte Ltd Green Highland Renewables Simec Uskmouth Power Limited Normandie Hydroliennes SAS (49%) |
Website | www |
SIMEC Atlantis Energy (SAE, formerly: Atlantis Resources) is a renewable energy company. It is incorporated in Singapore, but its operational headquarters are in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom. [1] [2] Initially, it was a developer of the tidal power turbines and projects, but after becoming a part of GFG Alliance it has expanded its business also to the waste-to-energy [3] and hydropower. [4]
In February 2014, Atlantis became the world's first tidal energy company to float on the London Stock Exchange's AIM sub-market and commenced construction on MeyGen, [5] Europe's largest tidal power project in the Pentland Firth. [6] On 20 February 2017, the company announced that it had completed the phase 1a of the Meygen project. This phase included the design, manufacture and deployment of four 1.5 MW turbines. [7] The project received £1.5 million Scottish Government grant in 2020. [8]
A number of strategic investments and acquisitions occurred in late 2015 and throughout 2016. [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] SAE acquired the tidal turbine developer Marine Current Turbines from Siemens, including the SeaGen turbine in Strangford Lough, and a portfolio of six project sites. [14] SAE also acquired two other projects from ScottishPower Renewables, the 100 MW Ness of Duncansby site in the Pentland Firth to the east of the MeyGen project, and a 10 MW project in the Sound of Islay. [10] In 2016 the company decided to focus on the most developed sites, so returned the agreement for lease for two potential projects to the Crown Estate, one at Kylerhea between Skye and the Scottish mainland and one at Anglesey Skeries, North Wales. [15]
In 2017, GFG Alliance acquired 49.99% stake in the company in return of the coal-fired Uskmouth power station, which was to be converted to a 220 MW waste-to-energy plant. [3] [4] Consequently, Atlantis Resources was renamed SIMEC Atlantis Energy. [3] In early 2021 the planning was called-in by the Welsh Government for the development of Uskmouth power station, putting the project in doubt. The project was abandoned in April 2022. [16]
In 2019, SAE acquired the Scottish hydro developer Green Highland Renewables. [4]
In 2020, it created a subsidiary Atlantis Operations Japan, which will build a tidal turbine between the southern Japanese islands of Hisaka and Naru islands for Kyuden Mirai Energy. [17] The 500 kW AR500 turbine was built at the Nigg Energy Park, and shipped to Japan for installation. The turbine was reported to have produced 10 MWh of energy in the first days of operation in early February 2021. [18] The turbine was decommissioned in December 2023, and will be upgraded in Japan for redeployment in 2025. [19]
Also in 2020, SAE announced plans to develop a 160 MW Wyre tidal barrage on the River Wyre. [20] This would be in conjunction with Natural Energy Wyre Limited, who started developing the project in 2015. It is proposed the barrage would span the river between Fleetwood and Knott End, and would generate 90 MW of electricity. [21]
In October 2022, there was a management buyout of the Advanced Tidal Engineering and Services (ATES) with the associated IP and staff, forming a new company called Proteus Marine. SAE remains a minority shareholder in the new company, with a 21% stake. Proteus Marine will continue to supply turbines to SAE, for MeyGen and other projects. [22] [23] [24] [25]
Atlantis has commercial and project development teams based in Edinburgh. Through its subsidiaries, the company is developing the 6 MW Meygen tidal turbine array in Pentland Firth, Scotland. [26]
In the cooperation with the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation and the China Three Gorges Corporation, it helped to design the 500-kilowatt tidal-stream turbine which was installed between Putuoshan and Huludao islands in the Zhoushan archipelago, China. [27]
It had an operations base located at Nigg Energy Park in Invergordon and the turbine and engineering services division was located in Bristol. In Japan, it supplied the 500-kilowatt tidal-stream turbine which was between Hisaka and Naru. [17] In France, SIMEC Atlantis Energy held a 49% stake in Normandie Hydroliennes, the marine energy development company which is developing 12 MW tidal power project in Raz Blanchard. [28] All of these were transferred to Proteus Marine in October 2022. [23]
The Pentland Firth is a strait which separates the Orkney Islands from Caithness in the north of Scotland. Despite the name, it is not a firth.
Tidal power or tidal energy is harnessed by converting energy from tides into useful forms of power, mainly electricity using various methods.
Engie Energy International, formerly International Power, is a multinational electricity generation company headquartered in Newcastle upon Tyne, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the French company Engie.
The Pelamis Wave Energy Converter was a technology that used the motion of ocean surface waves to create electricity. The machine was made up of connected sections which flex and bend as waves pass; it is this motion which is used to generate electricity.
The Rance Tidal Power Station is a tidal power station located on the estuary of the Rance River in Brittany, France.
The production of renewable energy in Scotland is a topic that came to the fore in technical, economic, and political terms during the opening years of the 21st century. The natural resource base for renewable energy is high by European, and even global standards, with the most important potential sources being wind, wave, and tide. Renewables generate almost all of Scotland's electricity, mostly from the country's wind power.
Wind power is the fastest-growing renewable energy technology in Scotland, with 11,482 megawatts (MW) of installed wind power capacity by Q1 2023. This included 9,316 MW from onshore wind in Scotland and 2,166 MW of offshore wind generators.
Renewable energy in the United Kingdom contributes to production for electricity, heat, and transport.
The European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) Ltd is a UKAS accredited test and research center focused on wave and tidal power development, based in the Orkney Islands, UK. The centre provides developers with the opportunity to test full-scale grid-connected prototype devices in wave and tidal conditions.
SeaGen was the world's first large scale commercial tidal stream generator. It was four times more powerful than any other tidal stream generator in the world at the time of installation. It was decommissioned by SIMEC Atlantis Energy Limited in summer 2019, having exported 11.6GWh to the grid since 2008.
Marine Current Turbines Ltd (MCT), was a United Kingdom-based company that developed tidal stream generators, most notably the 1.2 MW SeaGen turbine. The company was bought by the German automation company, Siemens in 2012, who later sold the company to Atlantis Resources in 2015.
The Uskmouth power stations refers to a series of two coal-fired power stations at the mouth of the River Usk in the south-east of Newport, Wales. The first of the two station, Uskmouth A power station, was built in the 1940s and demolished in 2002.
A tidal farm is a group of tidal stream generators used for production of electric power. The potential of tidal farms is limited by the number of suitable sites across the globe as there are niche requirements to make a tidal farm cost effective and environmentally conscious.
A tidal stream generator, often referred to as a tidal energy converter (TEC), is a machine that extracts energy from moving masses of water, in particular tides, although the term is often used in reference to machines designed to extract energy from the run of a river or tidal estuarine sites. Certain types of these machines function very much like underwater wind turbines and are thus often referred to as tidal turbines. They were first conceived in the 1970s during the oil crisis.
The Saltire Prize, named after the flag of Scotland, was a national award for advances in the commercial development of marine energy.
MeyGen is a tidal stream energy plant in the north of Scotland. The project is located in the Pentland Firth, specifically the Inner Sound between the Island of Stroma and the Scottish mainland.
Orbital Marine Power is a Scottish renewable energy company focused on the development and global deployment of its pioneering floating turbine technology. The O2 is Orbital's first commercial turbine and represents the culmination of more than 15 years of world leading product development in the UK. The 74 m long turbine is expected to operate in the waters off Orkney for the next 15–20 years with the capacity to meet the annual electricity demand of around 2,000 UK homes with clean, predictable power from the fast-flowing waters while offsetting approximately 2,200 tonnes of CO2 production per year. In a further ground-breaking element of the project, the O2 will provide power to the European Marine Energy Centre's onshore electrolyser to generate green hydrogen that will be used to demonstrate decarbonisation of wider energy requirements.
Nova Innovation Ltd is a Scottish developer of tidal stream turbines, based in Leith, Edinburgh. They deployed their first 30 kW turbine in 2014. Since then, they have developed and tested a 100 kW seabed mounded two-bladed horizontal-axis tidal stream turbine, and plan to scale this up in future. Up to six of these turbines have been deployed simultaneously in the Bluemull Sound, Shetland since 2016.
Many tidal stream generators have been developed over the years to harness the power of tidal currents flowing around coastlines. These are also called tidal stream turbines (TST), tidal energy converters (TEC), or marine hydro-kinetic (MHK) generation. These turbines operate on a similar principle to wind turbines, but are designed to work in a fluid approximately 800 times more dense than air which is moving at a slower velocity. Note that tidal barrages or lagoons operate on a different principle, generating power by impounding the rising and falling tide.