by David Hoyle
Editor’s note: This post by TMI member David Hoyle is TMI’s first digest of recent tidal energy development news with links to the full articles. Further updates will be posted regularly, in keeping with one of Tide Mill Institute’s missions: promoting tidal energy development. Thank you David!
Scottish company Orbital Marine Power will commission its Orbital O2 tidal turbine near the Orkney Islands. The 2 MW tidal turbine is billed as the world’s largest (compare with 1.5 MW MeyGen turbines, below). Note that in Scotland 2 MW is touted as power for 2000 homes – in the US the claim would be more like 300-400 homes. Also mentioned is a project to gather data on the tidal energy potential off of the Scilly Islands SW of England. The article concludes with the following statistics: 260 KW of tidal stream capacity was installed in Europe in 2020 versus 14.7 GW of wind capacity installed in the same year. Thanks to Richard Duffy and others for pointing out this article.
Read the article at cnbc.com.
More Tidal Energy Headlines
The world’s most powerful tidal turbine launches in Scotland
This is another article about Orbital Marine Power’s Orbital O2 turbine, but it includes some excellent animations showing how the turbine will be installed and how it will operate.
Read the article at electrec.co.
Riding the tides: Interview with Jason Hayman, CEO, Sustainable Marine Energy
While lower capacity than the Orbital O2 turbine, this Sustainable Marine Energy floating tidal generator is being tested at the FORCE tidal technology test site in the Bay of Fundy on our side of the Atlantic. Sustainable Marine Energy’s CEO describes the challenges of anchoring and operating a trimaran-type vessel supporting multiple turbines in the bay’s 10-knot current.
Read the article at MarineLink.com.
Diamond Infrastructure Development Inc. brings a broader promise of tidal power fulfilled ocean energies
Article begins with an interesting history of the never completed Passamaquoddy tidal power project in Maine supported by FDR and JFK. Feel free to ignore the infomercial for Diamond Infrastructure’s wave power technology toward the end.
Read the article at einnews.com
Cook Inlet slated to have one of the first tidal power generators in the country
Maine’s ORPC tidal turbine technology to be installed in Cook Inlet, Alaska. (See also the following article.)
Read the article at ktoo.org.
Irish-led tidal energy project receives €3m in EU funding just now
Irish-led consortium involving ORPC, Eire Composites, and NUI Galway to develop tidal power generators with blades made from recycled carbon fiber.
Read the article at siliconrepublic.com.
UK group wants to expand largest tidal energy project
Scottish company SIMEC Atlantis Energy wants to expand its MeyGen tidal power generation program. The first phase of the project fielded four 1.5 MW turbines in Pentland Firth just off the northern tip of Scotland.
Read the article at powermag.com.
Electric cars powered by tidal energy are driving Scotland toward net zero emissions
A nice example of renewable, all electric infrastructure on the Shetland Islands.
Read the article at weforum.org.
The U.S. is finally looking to unlock the potential of wave energy
I’ve included this article on Oregon’s recently approved PacWave wave energy test site because I’d love to see a similar facility for evaluation of tidal and wave energy technologies located on the US East Coast (cf. FORCE in Bay of Fundy). Why not offshore Maine?
Read the article at grist.com.