Tidal Harvester Ltd (THL) operates from the Orbis Renewable Energy Centre in Lowestoft, and is a spin-out from 4NRg Ltd: a specialist offshore R&D consultancy. The company has received around £130,000 of grant funding to develop offshore tidal energy technologies designed to exploit the offshore wind farm investments, significantly reducing Capex requirements and improving the profitability of the farms. 4NRg has done consultancy work for the Broads Authority (more here) on ways to combine tidal energy generation with tidal barriers: specifically to protect the Broads National Park, but also with much wider application opportunities. Out of this has come a second device: the TH5.

The opportunity is twofold: manufacturing and deploying devices into the North Sea - with 25,000 wind turbines planned, a similar number of tidal devices is feasible and a 20% share would give 5,000 devices generating around £700k per annum each. Beyond the North Sea, the technology can be licensed, with the USA and China being the prime opportunities.