Investor Relations
NRE was formed in September 2005, to own and develop tidal and wave power IPR.
£100,000 has already been raised from equity investment for the development of the Proteus and Triton concepts and scaled modelling. Based on the success of the research, the engineering design analysis and commercial costing work and subject to due diligence, negotiations are taking place with potential investors for the design and construction of the demonstrator which will be deployed at full scale in 2008. Further equity will be raised for the construction of the commercial arrays although revenue from the staged deployments will reduce the total funding required. Thereafter it is planned to install arrays of 20 units in the Humber and Mersey during 2009 – 2012.
It has been suggested that energy produced from offshore waves and tidal stream farms will cost between 12p/kWhr and 44p/kWhr and 9p/kWhr and 18p/kWhr respectively (Future Marine Energy, The Carbon Trust 2006). These figures are obviously much higher than other carbon based and renewable sources and arguably not competitive. It is this challenge that the team within NRE believe it has overcome. NRE has developed cost engineered innovations which provide a target cost for electricity of <5p/kWhr. We belive this figure makes both the wave and tidal devices competitive when compared to current offshore wind power generation.
Neptune Intellectual Property
The international patents are pending for the tidal power pontoon and wave buoy. The IPR for the Neptune Proteus design rests entirely Neptune Renewable Energy Ltd.
Business Opportunity
In addition to working as a site developer, owning and operating the Humber and Mersey arrays, NRE is able to licence the technologies or to provide turn key systems for other developers on a world wide basis.