Capturing energy from marine currents has always been an exciting prospect. Now, progress in wind turbine technology and off-shore oil exploitation has made this concept more of an economic reality. Although the marine environment is harsh, the energy available is more predictable and far denser than that available from wind.
Tidal energy
Southampton's Sustainable Energy Research Group is at the forefront of the development and design of marine current energy converters that extract energy from tidal flows. To understand the potential of this new technology detailed assessment of the available tidal resource in UK waters have been conducted. The results highlight that up to 10 per cent of the UK’s current electricity demand could be generated by tidal energy... Read more
Wave energy
The group is undertaking exploratory development of a novel wave energy converter termed Anaconda... Read more
View a film of Anaconda
There is an excellent full scale animation which shows the Anaconda wave energy converter in action here
