Electricity from ocean currents within five years

Public energy supplier SEV and Swedish marine energy technology developer Minesto have since 2020 been trialling an ocean current system in the Vestmanna strait.

Such systems are being tested elsewhere in the world, but what makes the Faroese project special is that the system is connected to the national electricity grid.

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The trials have been so successful that SEV expects to start generating electricity from the system within the next five years.

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Minesto’s Deep Green technology produces electricity from slow tidal streams and ocean currents by sweeping small turbines across a large area at a speed several times the actual speed of the underwater current

”Minesto is focusing on the Faroes for its development work due to the favourable conditions here,” says SEV development manager Terji Nielsen.

Minesto CEO Martin Edlund said in 2019 that tidal resources in the Faroes are among the best in the world.

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Minesto reckons that its ocean current system is capable of generating about 20 percent of the total energy consumption in the Faroes.

SEV believes this figure can become even higher once the system is properly implemented.

Read the Faroese version of this article here.

More Faroese News in English.