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Should the UK be focusing on tidal energy?

  • Publish Date: Posted over 1 year ago
  • Author: Steve Walia

​Experts have called on the government to leverage Britain's 'biggest untapped energy resource' in the form of wave and tidal energy as means of shoring up the security of supply and avoiding the prospect of national energy blackouts.

 

Experts at TPGen24 believe that tidal power is the only true solution to tackling the looming energy crisis for the longer term, calling UK shores a unique and as-yet untapped source of near-limitless clean energy. The UK has been working hard to reduce its reliance on expensive and unreliable oil and gas imports by focusing on solar and wind, but these are intermittent energy sources and unreliable.

 

When winds are absent - or excessive - or the sun doesn't shine, the UK has to use fossil fuel plants to make up the shortfall and pay wind energy providers to pause on production. Tidal power is different because it provides a highly predictable base load and can operate 24/7 to provide continuous power.

 

TPGen24 already has a functioning tidal plant which uses three tiered lagoons, each with a dam of 10,000 stacked turbines that are controlled by automated sluice gates. As water passes through the turbines, the blades rotate to generate power, from both rising and receding tides, to produce consistent energy around the clock.

 

Each plant is located at least a kilometre offshore, which limits any impact on fragile coastal ecosystems. Just one of these plants can produce enough energy every year to power 800,000 homes and 10 million electric cars.

 

With the UK blessed with some of the best tidal and coastal arrays in Europe, this innovative and potentially limitless source of clean power could provide an absolute lifeline to the country's net-zero emissions strategy and the plan to become truly energy self-sufficient.