The CLEARWATER Project was a European Commission grant awarded under the FP7 programme of €7.7 million made to CLEARWATER consortium, led by Atlantis Resources Ltd to design, build, install and operate an open ocean tidal energy farm in the Inner Sound in the Pentland Firth, off the Northern coast of Scotland within the wider 398 MW Agreement for Lease of the MeyGen project.
The CLEARWATER Project is now complete and demonstrated the technical and economic feasibility of a multi-turbine tidal energy array, an essential step to catalyse development of commercial projects in the EU ocean energy industry. CLEARWATER provided a credible, robustly implemented transition from high cost single turbine demonstration deployments of marine turbines to economically viable multi turbine arrays. The consortium consists of:
- SIMEC Atlantis energy (Atlantis): tidal stream technology and project developer
- Edinburgh University: research institution (with significant focus on all aspects of ocean energy, from resource analysis, through to array modelling and commercialisation research)
- Royal Haskoning DHV: engineering and environmental consultancy (having secured in excess of 2,000MW of offshore wind consents)
- DHI Water & Environment: world leaders in tidal resource assessment and hydrographical modelling.
CLEARWATER, which commenced in early 2014 and ran until 2018, built on the AR-series open ocean tidal turbine system tested at EMEC and delivered a wide range of new innovations. Most importantly the project provided a number of step changes to catalyse the European tidal stream industry.
The CLEARWATER Project is broken down into several work packages (WP) with specific objective for each. Please click on the links below for each WP where further detail can be found along with information on project milestones and deliverables.
WP2 Project Development and Environmental Monitoring
WP3 Resource Assessment and Monitoring
WP5 Grid connection and power electronics
WP10 Operations and Maintenance
A number of project milestones have been set to be achieved throughout the project.
| Milestone Number | Milestone name | WP number | Status |
| MS1 | Project consent | WP2 | Complete |
| MS2 | Project design | WP4 | Complete |
| MS3 | Fabrication | WP7 | Complete |
| MS4 | Deployment | WP8 | Complete |
| MS5 | First power | WP9 | Not commenced |
| MS6 | Final reporting | WP11 | Not commenced |
| Deliverable Number | Deliverable Name | WP number | Dissemination level | Status |
| D1.1 | Financial model for commercial project | 1 | Confidential | |
| D1.2 | European future supply chain Opportunities report | 1 | Public | |
| D1.3 | Progress reports | 1 | Confidential | |
| D2.1 | Environmental Monitoring Plan | 2 | Public | Complete |
| D2.2 | Environmental Management Plan | 2 | Public | Complete |
| D3.1 | Wake monitoring analysis and turbine
placement plan for commercial scale array, along with power production predictions |
3 | Public | |
| D4.1 | Detailed tidal array design report | 4 | Confidential | Complete |
| D5.1 | Provision and installation of onshore control
system |
5 | Demonstrator | Complete |
| D6.1 | 1 x AR-1500 nacelle with complete quality documentation delivered to point of mobilisation | 6 | Demonstrator | Complete |
| D7.1 | Completed foundation with accompanying Quality documentation delivered to the point of mobilisation. | 7 | Confidential | Complete |
| D8.1 | Clearwater project turbine deployed | 8 | Confidential | Complete |
| D9.1 | Initial AR Series turbine commissioned
and producing power to the Scottish National Grid |
9 | Public | |
| D10.1 | 10,000MWh to the Scottish electricity grid | 10 | Report |