Wave Hub Plugged In and Ready for Business

The Wave Hub scheme is officially open for business after being 'plugged into' the National Grid.

The £42m project - the world's largest test site for wave technology - was hooked up to the grid for the first time on the 2nd of November via a 25km cable, the final 5km of which is buried under 91,000 tonnes of rock.

Wave Hub will give wave power developers the opportunity to connect their devices and evaluate their performance.

On November 3rd Guy Lavender, General Manager of Wave Hub, addressed an audience at the RenewableUK annual conference and exhibition in Glasgow, saying: 'We've been continually testing the integrity of the whole system during the installation process but yesterday was the first time it was fully energised and plugged in to the grid, and I'm delighted to say that it went without a hitch.

'From today the system will be permanently energised and monitored, so Wave Hub is well and truly open for business.'

Ocean Power Technologies has already signed up to test its PowerBuoy wave energy converter next year at Wave Hub, which currently has a capacity of 20MW, but can be scaled up to 50MW as larger devices come online.