Oceanflow Development Limited is delighted to have secured a 7 year lease from The Crown Estate on an area of seabed in Sanda Sound, South Kintyre. The lease will allow Oceanflow to deploy and test its Evopod™ floating tethered tidal stream turbine at the site from 2014.

Graeme Mackie, Oceanflow's Managing Director, said:

"Obtaining access to the Sanda Sound test site from The Crown Estate will allow us to test our ¼ scale grid connected unit in a harsh open sea environment so that we can demonstrate the potential of full scale Evopod™ semi-submerged turbines for exposed sea areas such as the Pentland Firth. Oceanflow believes that floating tethered turbines will be cheaper to install and to operate than seabed mounted devices and the tests in Sanda Sound will help demonstrate the potential of this technology to exploit Scotland's extensive tidal stream resource which is mainly in the deeper water exposed sites."

Oceanflow Development, the Scottish subsidiary of Oceanflow Energy, intends to use the Sanda Sound site for long term testing of its Evopod™ tidal stream turbine.  The sub-50kW test device, which is being deployed with Scottish Enterprise WATERS funding support, will be grid connected and could be a forerunner to other community energy scale tidal power projects around the coastline of Scotland. 

Oceanflow is currently looking for a large industrial partner and this search is led by the London based Merchant Bank Turquoise International

Note to Editors

1. Oceanflow Development Limited is a Scottish based subsidiary of Oceanflow Energy Limited, a marine renewable technology development company based near Newcastle upon Tyne. The company has followed a staged programme of research and development into tidal stream energy recovery based around its floating semi-submerged turbine support platform that is simpler to install and easier to access for maintenance than more conventional bottom mounted turbines.
2. The deployment of the community energy scale device in Sanda Sound received a boost in July 2010 when the company was successful in winning Scottish Enterprise funding support through its WATERS (Wave and Tidal Energy R&D Support) fund
3. Oceanflow's technology involves a floating low-motion platform that supports a horizontal axis turbine coupled to a generator housed in a watertight nacelle, much like a wind turbine only submerged. The device is tethered to the seabed with an innovative mooring system that ensures that the device always points into the flow whether on the flood or ebb tide. Oceanflow has secured patent rights to its platform and mooring solution both in the UK and overseas. Oceanflow has been testing a 1/10th scale mono-turbine version of its device in Strangford Narrows since 2009.
4. The key differentiator with Oceanflow's technology over most other tidal turbines is the simplicity of its deployment and recovery. The company recognises that, like offshore wind turbines, the ease of access for maintenance is central to achieving good economic performance with tidal turbines and this has formed the focus of the company's technology development from the outset. For more information on Oceanflow and its tidal technology visit www.oceanflowenergy.com

For further information

Alistair Mackie, Oceanflow Development Ltd, Alistair@OceanflowDevelopment.com

www.oceanflowenergy.com