Wave Power (Hansard, 20 January 1989)

§ Mr. Home Robertson
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make it his policy to direct officials at Harwell to instruct their wave energy consultants to reveal cumulative failure rate figures for wave energy devices to the designers of those devices, and if he will make a statement.

§ Mr. Michael Spicer
Failure rate data for all wave energy devices assessed were made available to the device teams. A report from 1983 by Yard summarising this data entitled "Review of Yard's Studies of the Reliability and Maintainability of Wave Energy Devices" is available and copies have been placed in both Houses of Parliament.

§ Mr. Home Robertson
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy (1) what is his Department's estimate of the failure rate, in terms of kilometre years per fault, of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board electrical cable crossing the Pentland Firth from Caithness to Orkney;
(2) what are his Department's estimates for the failure rate, in terms of kilometre years per fault, of the rigid sea bed connections assessed by wave energy consultants in their series of reports to his Department;
(3) if his Department has ever consulted the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board about the failure rates of 342W sea bed cables; and what steps he has taken to assess whether the rates quoted by his Department's consultants, Rendel, Palmer and Tritton, are realistic.

§ Mr. Michael Spicer
I am informed that various data were collected by the wave energy consultants on reliability of cables and related components from the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board and other sources in their assessment of large-scale wave energy. Typical failure rates for conventional submarine power cables were in the range 0.3–1.0 per 100 km per year. These data were not directly used in the estimation of the reliability of large scale wave energy power collection and transmission systems because of the complex nature of the systems assessed. It was accepted however that loss in availability due to transmission systems unreliability was unlikely to be large and 6 per cent. for fixed devices and 9 per cent. for floating devices were finally assumed based on previous work and engineering judgments of the independent consultants.

§ Mr. Home Robertson
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a statement on the outcome of discussions between his officials and the costing department of the civil engineering company Whessoe concerning the application of parametric costing techniques to the prediction of the capital cost of offshore 343W wave power devices; and what conclusions have been reached as to why his Department's estimate was greater than that calculated by Whessoe.

§ Mr. Michael Spicer
The parametric costing technique is a useful tool in assisting the assessment of the costs of the various renewable energy technologies including wave energy. The total cost estimated by parametric techniques for a component when fully integrated into a system will inevitably be higher than the cost of that single component estimated by a company such as Whessoe. Systems costs include such factors as system design, installation, commissioning, quality assurance and project management and these extra costs have to be added to the "off the shelf" component cost in order to derive the full system cost used in the parametric method of costing.

§ Mr. Home Robertson
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if the decision to close the offshore wave energy programme was made unanimously by the members of the Advisory Council on Research and Development.

§ Mr. Michael Spicer
The collectively agreed view of the Advisory Council on Research and Development on the wave energy programme and other renewable energy sources was made availalbe to the Libraries of both Houses on 27 April 1982.

§ Mr. Home Robertson
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will initiate a reassessment of the technical quality of the advice which led to the closure of the first offshore wave programme.

§ Mr. Michael Spicer
A major input to the discussion in 1982 by the Advisory Council on Research and Development of the renewable energy programme was a strategic review by the chief scientist's group at ETSU. This review was subsequently published as ETSU R13. Information and advice on wave energy for the review was supplied by the device teams. Subsequent work and a report by consultants confirmed that large offshore wave energy was unlikely to be cost effective. I am satisfied that advice on the wave energy programme was the best available at that time and no useful purpose would be served by reviewing the decision procedure then used.

§ Mr. Home Robertson
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will establish an inquiry to determine whether the programe for wave energy of the energy technology support unit, made all the relevant papers on the methods of reliability calculation written by Professor Stephen Salter available to his Department's wave energy steering committee.

§ Mr. Michael Spicer
All relevant papers on reliability calculations by Professor Salter were circulated to members of the wave energy steering committee. Indeed in 1984, Professor Salter gave a presentation to that committee putting the Edinburgh university device team's case for the duck device, and a summary of his presentation including such matters as availability and reliability was circulated to the committee members after the meeting.

§ Mr. Home Robertson
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will take steps to ensure that the memorandum by Dr. Roy Taylor of the energy technology support unit dated 25 April 1985, relating to the costs of an offshore wave device is communicated to the appropriate Advisory Council on Research and Development committee.
344W

§ Mr. Michael Spicer
The memorandum for Dr Roy Taylor dated 25 April 1985 was a partial calculation in support of other work which was made available to the wave energy steering group and summarised in "Wave Energy—The Department of Energy's R&D Programme 1974–1983", published as ETSU R.26 in 1985.

§ Mr. Home Robertson
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will list the assignments given to Mr. Peter Davies subsequent to his work as manager of the wave energy programme.

§ Mr. Michael Spicer
Mr. Peter Davies was the programme manager of the electricity producing renewable technologies at the Department's energy technology support unit. This included the technologies of wind, hydro, and wave energy. Mr. Davies was appointed to ETSU after the decision to close the large-scale wave energy programme was made and was charged with the difficult job of running down the programme and completing the various contracts satisfactorily.
In 1985, Mr. Davies was transferred to the northern division of the UKAEA at Risley. Since that time his work has included leading the authority inquiry team for the European demonstration reprocessing plant public inquiry. He is currently head of the technical policy division in the UKAEA Risley technical services at Risley.