The Saltire Prize
The Saltire Prize |
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Micro-energetics this is not! Nevertheless, renewables it most certainly is, so here are the details:
The Saltire Prize is worth £10,000,000. Ten Million UK Pounds. Or Twenty Million US Dollars. It will be awarded to the team that can demonstrate in Scottish waters a commercially viable wave or tidal energy technology that achieves a minimum electrical output of 100GWh over a continuous 2 year period using only the power of the sea and is judged to be the best overall technology after consideration of cost, environmental sustainability and safety.
100 Gigawatt-hours sounds a lot, but over two years it works out at 5.97 Megawatts or so. That, for example, is around half-a-dozen of the Strangford Lough one-megawatt prototype tidal generators (see the Seagen page).
You can find out the details on the Scottish Government website at the Salter Prize details page. As of 30th December 2008, 33 registrations of interest have been made from across the world since the criteria for the Saltire Prize Challenge were announced at the beginning of December.