Wave Hub successfully installed on seabed

Monday 06 September 2010The South West Regional Development Agency (RDA), which is developing the £42 million project, has announced that it has been safely deployed following a "delicate" operation to lower the 12-tonne marine energy device into 55 metres of water, 16km off the coast. According to the RDA, the hub was lowered to the ocean floor using a crane on board the cable laying ship ‘Nordica' on September 3. Over the weekend, the hub's four 300m ‘tails' were positioned on the seabed and later today, the vessel ‘Tideway Rollingstone' will start to place the first of 80,000 tonnes of rock on top of the 25km cable connecting Wave Hub to the shore to hold it in place. The 20MW Wave Hub is creating the "world's largest" test site for wave energy technology by building a grid-connected socket on the seabed in South West England, to which wave power devices can be connected and their performance evaluated.Wave Hub is connected to the shore via a 25km, 1,300-tonne subsea cable that has been laid over the last few weeks from the beach at Hayle on the north Cornwall coast out to the Wave Hub site. Last month, the export cable for ...