Tidal turbine installed at Orkney
The world’s most powerful tidal turbine has been installed on its moorings at the European Marine Energy Centre, Orkney, Scotland, as part of site commissioning and testing.
The 63-metre-long, 500-tonne floating turbine was towed to site from the port of Kirkwall on 12 October and connected to moorings, where it was installed using only low cost vessels.
The company’s CEO, Andrew Scott, said: “This is a tremendous achievement for the company and, I’d venture, the tidal sector.
“We see it as a real feather in our cap that we’ve managed to execute a construction and installation programme for a 2MW turbine using only low cost vessels. This will be a short installation but we’ll be seeking to further emphasise clear benefits of our approach in the operational phase, where much of the standard maintenance can be carried out with simple crew transfer vessels, and validate a game-changing reduction in cost of energy for the tidal sector.”
The current 2 MW ‘SR2000’ was launched from the Harland & Wolff shipyard, Belfast, Northern Ireland, in May before being towed to Orkney. Since arriving in Orkney waters, it has undergone a series of successful tow trials where simulated flow conditions behind a tow vessel allows the technical team to commission systems and complete functional tests in a controlled fashion ahead of starting its grid-connected test programme.
The SR2000 project has been supported by Scottish Enterprise’s WATERS 2 scheme along with investments from Scotrenewables’ shareholders which include ABB, DP Energy, Fred Olsen, Total and the Scottish government via the Renewable Energy Investment Fund (REIF).
Scotrenewables has recently been selected by the European Commission to lead on the engineering and delivery of an enhanced model of the SR2000 machine.
With £7m (~€7.8m) in Horizon 2020 funding, Scotrenewables will lead an industrial consortium to optimise the SR2000 under the ‘FloTEC’ project which is scheduled to run until 2019.
