• Home Page
• Partnership Area
• Company Structure
• Projects
• Solway Aquatic Litter
• Biodiversity in the Solway
• Solway Special Places Images Project
• Administrator vacancy at Solway Firth Partnership
• About Solway Firth Partnership
• Conference December 2010
• Solway Energy Gateway
• MCS Beachwatch Weekend 2010
• Solway wind energy
• Single Solway Campaign - Marine Bills must merge
• How you can help the Solway
• Tidelines
• Luce Bay SAC
• Dive into the Solway!
• New Code of Conduct for Solway lobster and scallop fishermen
• News Items
• Dates for your Diary
• Links Page
• Membership Form
• Downloads
• Contact Us

Solway Energy Gateway

NEW!!!! Visit the Solway Energy Gateway official website here

The idea behind the Solway Energy Gateway is to harness renewable tidal energy from the Solway Firth, which has one of the highest tidal ranges in the UK.  It is proposed that this might be done by a tidal barrage from Bowness-on-Solway on the Cumbrian coast across to Annan on the Dumfries and Galloway Coast, or other renewable tidal energy technology. The power generated by this scheme could then possibly be fed into the national grid through the nearby Chapelcross nuclear power station, which is currently being decommissioned.  An article on the proposed barrage and tidal energy scheme was written by Nigel Catterson of Nb21c and printed in issue 31, the Summer/Autumn 2009 edition, of Tidelines (see the downloads page of our web site for a pdf copy of Tidelines).

To investigate the feasibility of renewable tidal technologies in the Solway, the Solway Energy Gateway Feasability Project has been established, and its first meeting was held on 10th July at the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWRDA) in Warrington.  This meeting was also the inaugural meeting of the Project Review group and comprised representatives of

• NWDA, Scottish Enterprise and the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency, who together have provided £100,000 to fund the feasibility project

plus representatives from

• Halcrow who will carry out the feasibility study in a consortium with
• Mott MacDonald an engineering and development consultancy who helped to produce the UK Government’s White Paper – Meeting the Energy Challenge published in May 2007,
• and RSK Environment Ltd who will undertake the environmental work.

• Envirolink Northwest who aid the development and growth of the energy and environmental technologies and services sector in the Northwest of England
• Nb21c who was responsible for the conception, development and  promotion of the Solway Energy Gateway
• Solway Firth Partnership whose role in the Project will be to facilitate the passage of information between its members, the people of the Solway, stakeholders, interest groups, and the Project Review Group and resultant groups formed as the Solway Energy Gateway Feasability Project progresses.

The following key objectives were identified at the meeting:

1.       The collection of all available data regarding renewable tidal energy

2.       Identification of key stakeholders to be involved at specific stages of the Feasibility Project

3.       The need for reliable and up-to-date information to be available to the public

Information will be made available to the public through a wide variety of channels including through the Solway Firth Partnership, press releases, talks and displays at the Solway Firth Partnership Annual Conference in February 2010 (see here for more information), and a dedicated web site.  The final report of the feasibility study is available on our downloads page.

External links to information about the Solway Energy Gateway

Study into Solway Energy Gateway given the green light - press release from the Northwest Regional Development Agency

Technical feasibility study into tidal energy development on the Solway Firth - feasibility brief for the SEG project from the Envirolink web site