Scotrenewables installs world’s largest tidal turbine at EMEC for first time
The world’s most powerful tidal turbine, developed and manufactured by Scottish engineering company Scotrenewables Tidal Power Limited, has been installed on its moorings for the first time at the European Marine Energy Centre, Orkney as part of site commissioning and testing.
The 2 MW “SR2000” floating turbine was towed to site by Green Marine’s vessel the Green Isle – leaving Kirkwall at 9am on 12th October it was connected to its moorings on the Fall of Warness by 3pm. Adhering to engineering a low cost, low risk approach to their turbine solution: Scotrenewables completed all site construction and installation work for the 2MW unit, including installation of the 500 tonne turbine itself, using locally available workboat vessels.
Speaking of the achievement the company’s CEO, Andrew Scott, said: “This is a tremendous achievement for the company and, I’d venture: the tidal sector. And it has only been possible through the determination, vision and ingenuity of a small, but highly determined team that has worked relentlessly to get to this exciting milestone. I’d also like to thank the team at Green Marine whose input and professionalism has been a major benefit to us.” Of the future testing programme Andrew added: “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.”
Jason Schofield, Managing Director of Orkney based Green Marine said: “It has been refreshing to work with the Scotrenewables team on their pioneering turbine which we feel has let us play to our strengths and implement a low cost and locally based solution for them.”
Image: A Scotrenewables’ SR2000 being deployed at EMEC tidal test site. Photo: courtesy of Scotrenewables.