VerdErg has been awarded Energy Catalyst funding to develop VETT for tidal applications

The Energy Catalyst has been established by Innovate UK, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to support UK businesses to develop innovative technologies that can address the energy ‘trilemma’ of reducing emissions, improving security of supply and reducing cost. VerdErg Renewable Energy has been successful in securing funding from round 1 of the Energy Catalyst programme to conduct a technical feasibility study to explore how VETT’s basic design principles can be used to develop a bi-directional design for tidal applications. Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) modelling will act as a design support tool to better understand the nature of the highly complex hydrodynamic conditions within proposed bi-directional VETT configurations and help identify promising solutions on which future experimental work can be based.

The UK is committed to delivering energy policies and national and international legislation targeted at addressing the key challenges facing the energy sector. With the support of the Energy Catalyst award, VerdErg helps to address these initiatives and the energy ‘trilemma’ by expanding the development of VETT for wider hydropower applications which will in turn help bring economic sustainable hydropower to the UK tidal energy market.