Inyanga Marine Energy Group, the developer of the patented HydroWing tidal energy technology, has announced a new crowdfunding round.
Delivered in partnership with equity crowd funding platform Crowdcube, the funding round offers the opportunity for investment in the ‘all-in-one’ HydroWing solution, which purports to be the only one of its kind globally. While the company did not specify how the money would be used, all of the necessary infrastructure for the project is installed, including a connection to the national grid and two substations on the shore.
After successful testing of the Passive Pitch Unit, which allows the blade rotor on HydroWing’s tidal energy device to automatically regulate its own pitch using a self-adjusting system, Richard Parkinson, CEO of Inyanga Marine Energy Group, said the project would be “highly investable”.
Last year, a report by Marine Energy Wales revealed that the marine energy sector received a record-breaking £103.4 million in investments and spending in 2022, almost quadruple the previous year’s figure.
In June this year, Inyanga signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Verdant Morlais Ltd (VML) to deliver a full engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) solution to VML, alongside a long-term operations and maintenance contract.
In September, HydroWing was the largest tidal stream project awarded in the UK government’s latest Contracts for Difference (CfD) allocation round (AR6). Building on a 10MW contract awarded in the previous allocation round, the CfD doubled the size of the HydroWing project at Morlais in Wales to 20MW, making it the largest tidal energy project in the UK.
Tidal energy in the UK
Late in September, the formal planning process for the Mersey Tidal Power scheme began. Potentially operational in under a decade, the project is thought to be the largest in the world.
The Mersey scheme differs from HydroWing in that it generates tidal range power, as opposed to tidal stream power. While tidal stream systems generate power using submerged turbines, usually in remote locations, tidal range schemes generate energy from the difference in the height of the tides as they ebb and flow through generators.
A report earlier this year from LUT University, Finland, revealed that the UK must harness 27GW of wave energy capacity by 2050 to achieve the “lowest cost, net zero energy system”.