“The company’s unique and scalable approach to tidal stream energy has an important role to play in the journey towards net-zero,” Munro said. This will provide high resolution data including spanwise distributions of flapwise and edgewise bending moments.
With the world at a stage where both governments and private sectors are pushing to end the use of dirty energy, such projects provide solutions that can help many companies go green. The Unsteady Loading Tidal Turbine Benchmarking Study is a community engagement activity that is conducting a series of high fidelity experiments on a highly instrumented 1.6m diameter tidal turbine in waves and turbulent flows. Mark Munro, executive director at SNIB, said that the investment aligns with the company’s mission of supporting homegrown solutions. The group conducts research into clean, renewable energy generation from tidal flows, and has a variety of active research projects spanning a number of topics.
According to the firm, the turbine has the capacity to generate 100 gigawatt hours of clean energy over its life, which will be distributed through the primary UK grid. The investments will be recovered over time through the sale of electricity from the facility. The O2 floating turbine developed by Scottish engineering firm Orbital Marine Power commenced power generation at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney, off the north coast of the Scottish. The support that the project has received from both private investors and the government shows the confidence people have in it. The world’s most powerful tidal turbine has started exporting power to the grid, in a major step for the promising renewable energy sector.
“These debt facilities will be serviced by the long-term sale of electricity from the turbine, forecast at around 100-gigawatt hours of clean predictable energy, delivered to the UK grid or hydrogen electrolyzers over its project life,” Orbital said in a statement.