World’s most powerful tidal turbine on route to Orkney
The world’s most powerful tidal turbine, the Orbital O2, is expected to arrive in Orkney over the weekend after being launched in Dundee earlier today.
The mammoth 2MW turbine, which weighs in at 680 tonnes, was transferred from the quayside in Dundee into the River Tay.
The turbine will now be towed up Scotland’s east coast on its journey to Orkney where it will be commissioned and connected to the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC).
Once operational, the O2 will have the ability to generate enough clean, reliable electricity to power 2,000 UK homes, and offset around 2,200 tonnes of CO2 production per year.
The developer behind the world-leading turbine is Orbital Marine Power, which has bases in Orkney and Edinburgh.
At its launch, Orbital’s CEO, Andrew Scott, said: “This is a huge milestone for Orbital; the O2 is a remarkable example of British cleantech innovation and the build we have completed here is an inspiring display of what a UK supply chain can achieve if given the opportunity — even under the extraordinary pressures of a pandemic.”
The O2 turbine has a 74-metre long hull structure with twin 1MW power generating nacelles at the end of retractable leg structures designed to give low-cost access to all major components for through life servicing. Ten-metre blades give the O2 more than 600m2 of swept area to capture flowing tidal energy.
The floating structure is held on station with a four-point mooring system where each mooring chain has the capacity to lift over 50 double decker buses.
The O2 has been designed so that installation of the turbine, and all its associated moorings, can be carried out by low-cost work vessels and servicing can be carried out by RIB vessels — minimising downtime and lowering construction and operational costs.
Electricity is transferred from the turbine via a dynamic cable to the seabed and a static cable along the seabed to the local onshore electricity network.