Hot on the heels of its appointment of Richard Round (right) as its CFO and fund raiser Aquamarine Power received the lates grant from Marine Renewables Proving Fund (MRPF), a £22, initiative funded by the UK Government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and managed by the Carbon Trust.

The fund aims to accelerate the leading and most promising marine energy devices towards the point where they can qualify for the UK Government’s existing Marine Renewables Deployment Fund support scheme and, ultimately, be deployed on a commercial scale. Aquamarine Power plans to deploy its first commercial Oyster devices in 2013.
 
First generation 315kW Oyster device was officially connected to the National Grid at EMEC in November 2009, currently undergoing sea trials to gather data to finalise Oyster 2 design, which will be deployed as a 2.5MW pod of three linked devices powering a single onshore hydro-electric generator.  This follows a two year research programme including scale-model tank testing also part-funded by the Carbon Trust. 

Some of the ground work to the current funding is probably attributable to Jim Boyd who joined Aquamarine Power as CFO in September 2008 from providing strategic and financial management consultancy within the oil, subsea gas and mining industries, and previously senior finance manager at Scottish and Southern Energy, re-focusing financial management of  commercial business during the 1995 merger.
 
Martin McAdam, (left) CEO of Aquamarine Power thanked the Carbon Trust and DECC for the funding and their overall contribution to the marine energy industry in the UK. 

He pointed out that funding was "Just one of a whole raft of ways that they have supported Aquamarine at various stages in the growth of our business,"