Orbital launches O2, the world's most powerful tidal turbine not connected to containment structures

Representatives of the Scottish company Orbital Marine Power issued a statement that the construction of the most powerful tidal turbine not connected to the barrier structures is fully completed. The turbine is currently on its way to the Orkney Islands, where it will begin generating electricity and demonstrate its full potential.

Tidal stations and their features of work

Every year the so-called "green trend" is gaining momentum, and the absolute leader in all this direction is solar energy. But the weak point of all solar panels is its strong dependence on weather conditions and thus poor predictability of energy production.

In this regard, tidal force compares favorably. After all, the ebb and flow of tides scientists have long learned to predict, and long ago found such "narrow" places in which the flow of water accelerates, which means it can be used to collect kinetic energy using turbines located below the surface ocean.

Today, several large projects in the field of tidal energy are already operating in the world. For example, the Korean Lake Sihwa tidal power plant and the Rance tidal power plant (France) are built using massive and very expensive underwater systems or barriers.

These systems close the flaps at low tide and open them at high tide in order to take advantage of the difference in elevation to start the turbines. Such systems function perfectly, but their price is incredibly high, and there is some negative impact on the environment.

Orbital Marine Power's new plant

Orbital Marine Power engineers have taken a completely different approach to maximize cost savings. So they decided to use floating turbines installed in channels where tidal currents are naturally accelerated.

These platforms are fixed in special places with extra strong chains, which means that the work on installing the turbines is not so expensive and fast enough.

At the same time, the turbines are attached to the main platform by means of huge levers, and the huge blades can be easily changed in height between ebb-and-flow cycles and thus generate electricity regardless of the direction in which it flows water.

At the same time, for maintenance of the turbines, it will be enough just to raise them to the surface with a simple turn of the levers.

A prototype of such an installation called SR2000 was installed back in 2017 with a nominal capacity of 2 MW and over the entire period of operation produced about 3 GWh in just one year of operation. And this despite the fact that the main purpose of the platform was research and development.

The new installation O2 designed for 2 MW. And, as the engineers say, their installation is quite capable of producing as much electricity as is needed for meeting the needs of 2,000 households and thus offset about 2,200 tons of CO2 emitted in atmosphere for the year.

In this case, the created installation O2, which is completely assembled on land, can be launched at any time and moved to any other place at the request of engineers.

After the commissioning of the installation, the company representatives will closely monitor how the station will behave, how much electricity will be generated during a certain period and how the main units will behave in an aggressive underwater environment.

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