Scotrenewables Tidal Power Ltd.
Scotrenewables Tidal Power Limited (“Scotrenewables”) was founded in 2002 in Orkney to develop cost effective tidal and river hydrokinetic turbines by offshore engineer Barry Johnston. The Company currently employs a team of 25 full time staff and is based in Orkney, Scotland, the home of the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC). From the start, the company’s design philosophy was to develop a turbine with low installation and maintenance costs. hyThis resulted in a floating turbine with retractable rotors allowing it to be easily towed to and from site with small, locally available vessels. In 2011, the company launched the SR250 250 kW prototype, the first large scale floating tidal turbine in the world.
Company details
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- Business Type:
- Manufacturer
- Industry Type:
- Hydro Power
- Market Focus:
- Globally (various continents)
About us
From 2003-2009, the company tested its technology at increasing scales, supported by strong investment from TOTAL and Fred. Olsen.
The turbine had an extremely successful 2 ½ year testing programme at EMEC, clocking up more than 4,000 hours of deployment in the harsh operating conditions of the North Sea. Towards the end of the testing programme, the turbine was fully connected to the national grid, verifying the floating tidal turbine approach at large scale.
In 2012, the company secured major new investment from ABB Technology Ventures, giving it one of the strongest investor partnerships in the tidal sector, with further investment from DP Energy, a leading tidal array development and the Scottish Government's Renewables Energy Investment fund in 2015.
The company has a highly skilled engineering and offshore operations team. It has partnerships for turbine assembly with Harland & Wolff Shipyard, Belfast and an established supply chain for turbine construction. In 2014, the company opened its own production facility for electrical system testing and assembly. The company has patents protecting the key design advantages of its technology and an excellent health and safety record.
In 2016, the company launched, a 2MW turbine, known as the SR2000, the culmination of more than 12 years of research, design and testing. This is the largest and most powerful tidal turbine in the world.
Environment
Scotrenewables are committed to protecting the marine environment and to contributing to the evolving understanding of the potential environmental impacts of the SR2000 and the wider tidal industry. Since the early prototype turbine testing, an environmental monitoring programme has been undertaken around the turbine.
For the SR2000 turbine testing at EMEC a robust Project Specific Environmental Monitoring Plan has been developed in consultation with Marine Scotland and Scottish Natural Heritage. This programme of work will focus on the potential impacts of the SR2000 on marine mammals and diving birds which regularly use the deployment site. It is hoped that this information will help to inform the environmental impact assessment required for future array scale deployments of the turbine.
Scotrenewables employ a dedicated environmental consents manager to manage the consenting and monitoring programmes associated with the company's test turbines and developments.