Rivtide Power, a subsidiary of MWNW Consulting, has been awarded a £100,000 SMART: SCOTLAND feasibility study grant by Scottish Enterprise to further develop its tidal energy technology.
The grant will enable Aberdeenshire-based Rivtide Power to develop a Mark 2 prototype of its Mass of Water Turbine (MOWT) . MOWT is a hydrokinetic turbine that generates power from slow flowing water such as rivers, tidal estuaries and ocean currents. The patent-protected system is said to be scalable from low kilowatts to multi-megawatts.
After significant internal investment, an initial prototype system was deployed in 2021, followed by computational modelling and verification which has led to the design of the Mark 2 system.
This SMART: SCOTLAND project will give Rivtide Power the opportunity to fully develop, manufacture and deploy the Mark 2 prototype turbine in a marine environment and prove the feasibility of the turbine system by generating electricity from slow flowing water.
The firm also plans to secure further private investment in the near future, with discussions ongoing with a number of interested parties.
Mike Wilson , chairman of MWNW Consulting, said: “We are delighted to have secured this substantial grant from Scottish Enterprise. It is a great achievement for our team to have our technology recognized in this way by Scottish Enterprise and we are very much looking forward to building and deploying our turbine during this project.”
According to Wilson, the system that will be deployed through this feasibility project is relatively small scale in terms of power output, but could be used for many different applications from providing power to riverside businesses, to supplying renewable power to offshore assets , or producing green hydrogen ,.
“We have also computationally verified the scalability of the system so we are confident that it will also work on a larger scale.
“We believe MOWT is a complementary technology to other tidal turbine systems as MOWT has been designed to harness energy effectively from areas of slow flowing water, whereas other turbines are designed for faster flowing water.
“Looking into the future, we believe that our technology has the potential to power microgrid systems for isolated and island communities and be exported globally. This SMART: SCOTLAND feasibility project is the next step in our journey,” Wilson added.
Rhona Allison , managing director of business growth at Scottish Enterprise, said: “Rivtide Power’s prototype MOWT technology is a great example of the type of innovative project SMART: Scotland feasibility grants were designed to support. With its ambitions to promote greater use of renewable electricity from slow-flowing water, generate green hydrogen, scale up for larger production and target energy export markets, Rivtide has the potential to play an important part in Scotland’s net zero transformation.”
The SMART: SCOTLAND feasibility grant is a Scottish Enterprise research and development grant that aims to support projects which display high levels of technical innovation and technical challenge with strong commercial potential. The grant enables companies to conduct technical feasibility studies to show how an idea can work in the real world.