Liverpool wants to build a large tidal power station

energy

The proposal to build a tidal power station on the Mersey River in northwest England was first made in 1924. Now the authorities are planning to create a power station with a production capacity of 1 gigawatt.

The River Mersey in England is about 100 kilometers long and flows near Liverpool. The city authorities are now planning a major tidal energy project, which, according to actors, should be able to provide electricity. Million homes. The actors did not specify the assumptions behind this figure and the estimated annual electricity production was not presented either.

Mersey is the river with The second highest tidal height in Great Britain. High tide is the difference between low and low tide.

– The River Mersey has high tides, with the difference between low and high tides being about nine metres. “So we have an opportunity to use this natural resource that exists locally for 1.6 million people in the Liverpool metropolitan area,” project director Martin Lande told the newspaper. New civil engineer.

The project is still at an early stage and the exact design is unclear. The expected capacity is 1 gigawatt, which is one of Eight projects Tidal energy is under development along the west coast of the UK.

barrier or lake

There are many interesting solutions in Mercy. An alternative is a dam-like barrier across the river where water can pass through turbines in the river, be captured and then released through the turbines again. Another option uses the tides in the same way, but builds a lagoon or fence in the river where the water rises at high tide.

“We’re not looking at a huge lake, we’re looking at a barrier or a small lake as a first step,” Martin Lande told New Civil Engineer.

A cross-river barrier solution is “potentially cheaper” according to Martin Lander and can also serve a second function as flood protection. The tidal power station is scheduled to have a lifespan of more than 100 years, during which time the River Mersey is expected to rise by one metre.

Two other tidal power plants are La Rance in France, which has a capacity of 240 MW, with 24 generators, and the Lake Sehwa power station in South Korea. The tidal power plant in South Korea has a capacity of 254 MW at present The largest in the world.

The authorities are cooperating with a South Korean company

Players at Liverpool also recently got into one In collaboration with K-Water, the South Korean state-owned water company that operates the tidal station at Lake Sehwa. This means that in Liverpool you do not have to start from scratch.

– It gives us a boost because purely schematically, in terms of shape, it’s very similar to what we’re going to do. So the idea that we will be pioneers is not entirely true – even though the work will be the first of its kind in the UK, he told New Civil Engineer magazine.

The first proposals to create a tidal barrier across the River Mersey have already been put forward 1924. Martin Lande now hopes the project will receive approval later in the year, but he does not expect to receive permission to begin construction before 2026 or 2027. He then expects it will take just over five years to complete construction.