Wave Dragon

Wave Dragon (Wales) Ltd, a leading developer in Wave Energy technology, are proposing the world’s largest wave energy converter at a location off the Pembrokeshire Coast. The demonstration project is being supported by the Welsh European Funding Office under the Objective 1 initiative. The device is intended to be tested for 3-5 years, whereupon it will be removed from the site and the site decommissioned. At the proposed location, the device can generate sufficient electricity each year to meet the annual demand of between 2,500 and 3,000 homes. Further out to sea, the device could eventually generate up to double this amount. The proposed location for this project is off the Marloes peninsula.

The unit off Pembrokeshire will be a 7 MW device and located two to three miles northwest of St Ann’s Head and tested for three to five years only, in order to gain operational experience and knowledge on the energy transfer efficiencies. The device even in this early demonstration phase, could produce enough clean and green electricity each year to meet the annual demand of between 2,500 and 3,000 homes, subject to grid connection. This clean generation will offset the release of about 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, the main greenhouse gas contributing to global warming and climate change.

The demonstration site has been selected in order to meet several criteria. It must be exposed to the predominant wind and wave direction but relatively close to land, for economic and operational purposes. The site must be close to a major port, in our case Milford Haven, but yet away from commercial shipping interests and outside of military firing ranges. The landfall of the cable must be close to potential grid connection locations. Due to these practical limitations, the demonstration site is located within the Pembrokeshire Marine SAC (Special Area of Conservation), and a full Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been conducted. However, Wave Dragon are only applying for permission to use this site as a test area and the Wave Dragon will only remain in place here for three to five years, covering an area of approximately 0.25 km2, before being removed; hopefully to join ten other units further (ten to twelve miles) out to sea, to form Britain’s first commercial wave energy farm.

How it Works

The Wave Dragon is large floating barge that produces energy directly from the power of the water; the only moving parts in the entire structure are the turbines. The Wave Dragon works by facing its outstretched collector arms towards the oncoming waves, these concentrate 300 metres of wave front towards 140 metres of ramp at the front of the structure. This focusing increases the wave height at the ramp, which in turn acts like a beach and causes the waves to overtop the device without breaking (and therefore without losing their potential energy) into the reservoir behind it. Much of the work on the design of the ramp has been to prevent the waves breaking as they reach the top of the ramp. By this action the water is elevated and given potential energy, which is turned into electricity by simply running the water down through turbines in the bottom of the structure.

The Wave Dragon actually produces energy in almost exactly the same way as a low-head hydro power station. This last fact is one of the major advantages of the Wave Dragon concept. There is no new technology utilised in this structure at all. The low-head turbines we are using are the same as the hydropower industry have been successfully using for over 80 years, the structure its self is based on designs that the maritime world has been using for even longer. This is of course another huge benefit of deploying in Pembrokeshire, in that there is a major resource of maritime construction experience that exists within Milford Haven and Pembroke Dock.

More information and downloads for Wave Dragon

Wave Dragon demonstration video

• Download: Wave Dragon Presentation by Hans Cr Sorenson
• Download: Project Demonstrator