Scotland’s Energy Minister, Paul Wheelhouse, has praised Nova Innovation’s milestone of delivering baseload power to the grid by combining tidal energy generation with Tesla energy storage system.
Minister Wheelhouse visited Nova Innovation’s Edinburgh-based workshop to see where the turbines were designed and manufactured.
Wheelhouse viewed live footage of the turbines generating energy from a natural, renewable source as well as monitoring the levels of energy being stored in real-time.
“Nova Innovation are a dynamic Scottish company with exciting technology and, of course, they can and should be rightly proud of having developed the World’s first tidal array at Bluemull Sound, Shetland.
“Now, with the support of £272,600 of Scottish Government funding, this already successful project will also allow for the deployment of additional tidal devices, expanding the generating capacity of the Nova Innovation Shetland Tidal Array.
“This project will utilize both renewable tidal technology and battery storage from one of the World’s pioneers of battery storage, Tesla, to overcome the challenges of current grid constraints and to enable the improved, uninterrupted, provision of low carbon energy not only in Shetland but in other small island communities across Scotland.
“Crucially, however, by undertaking this work in Scotland, we can also play a key role in helping inform the sustainable decarbonization of energy for communities across the world,” said Wheelhouse .
To remind, the UK grid has been supplied by clean power ‘on demand’ by Nova’s Tidal Energy Storage System (TESS) demonstrator since the start of October 2018.
TESS integrates integrates the company’s Shetland Tidal Array with Tesla’s Powerpack battery technology, and contributes to the reduction of carbon-intensive energy production.