The Aberdeen-based outfit is about to hand in plans to the UK government for a 50MW demonstration project in the North Sea that could, like Statoil’s Buchan Deep, 50km up the coast, be flowing electricity to the grid by 2017.

Pilot, headed by Allan McAskill, one of the brains behind the pioneering jacket-based Beatrice offshore project in 2007, has enlisted international engineering heavyweight Atkins and US floater designer Principle Power for the venture, which would be built around six to eight large units anchored 15km offshore near a deep-water trench known as the Dog’s Hole.

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