Having reached the 2MW rated capacity of their SR2000 tidal turbine earlier in April, and setting a new tidal industry benchmark, Scotrenewables have now generated over 18MWh within a continuous 24hr testing period; a performance level which matches established offshore wind turbines.
Speaking of the achievement, believed to be another tidal industry record, the CEO of Scotrenewables, Andrew Scott, said: "Recognising we are still in the early stages of our demonstration programme this is a tremendously reassuring level of performance to be achieving, one which provides further confidence in our technology's ability to deliver a significant step reduction in the cost of energy from tidal stream and meet our future customers' needs."
The 2MW SR2000 is undergoing a comprehensive, grid connected, test programme at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney focused on demonstrating power and hydrodynamic performance of the patented floating turbine technology in parallel with a low cost maintenance and vessel strategy.
Jonathan Meason, Scotrenewables' Engineering Manager said: "The SR2000 is providing invaluable experience and validation of our engineering - both of which are informing the optimisation exercise which we are undertaking within our flagship Horizon 2020 project; where we are confident we can considerably increase the performance from the system in parallel with reducing costs and risks."
Scotrenewables' EU funded Horizon 2020 project, "FloTEC", is a collaborative industry and supply chain initiative aimed at further reducing the cost of energy from the company's technology and providing the basis to commence commercial sales.
The SR2000 was conservatively engineered and built with a 16m rotor diameter for each of its 1MW turbines, improvements under the FloTEC project include increasing diameters to 20m with composite blades developed with project partners EireComposites. This step alone is projected to increase annual yield from turbines by over 50%.
