Release Date: 22 November, 2019
Orbital Marine Power scooped the Rural Blue Award for Blue Economy Enterprise of the Year at the inaugural Scottish Highlands and Islands Rural Economy (SHIREs) Awards in front of a packed audience at the Kingsmill Hotel, Inverness last night.
The SHIREs awards celebrate the very best of Scotland’s vibrant modern rural economy.
Orbital Marine Power was founded in the Highlands and Islands, in Orkney in 2002 and has performed advanced engineering, development and offshore testing of its world leading floating tidal technology from its headquarters in Kirkwall since then.
The company is also widely engaged with the engineering and offshore supply chain across the Highlands and Islands region and works closely with research partners at the University of the Highlands and Islands and Heriot-Watt University – Orkney campus.
Orbital Marine Power Ltd is an innovative Scottish engineering company focused on the development of a tidal energy turbine technology capable of producing a dramatic reduction in the cost of energy from tidal currents. The Orbital technology has been under continuous engineering development, including rigorous testing of scaled systems in both tank conditions and open ocean environments since the company was founded in 2002. The company currently employs 32 staff with offices in Orkney and Edinburgh.
Orbital was the first company in the world to successfully grid connect a floating tidal turbine in 2011. In 2016 the company launched the SR2000, the world’s most powerful tidal stream turbine. The SR2000 produced in excess of 3GWh of electricity over its initial 12-month continuous test programme. At the time this represented more power from a single turbine than had been generated cumulatively by the wave and tidal sector in Scotland over the 12 years prior to the launch of the SR2000.
In October 2018 Orbital opened a £7m crowd funding debenture on the London-based Abundance Investment platform to support the build of the O2 turbine with the target being met inside 10 weeks. The Orbital O2 will comprise of a 72m long floating superstructure, supporting two 1 MW turbines at either side for a nameplate power output of 2MW, at a tidal current speed of 2.5 m/s. With rotor diameters of 20m, it will have a 600sq metre rotor area, the largest ever on a single tidal generating platform to date.
The O2 project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the FloTEC project (grant agreement No. 691916) and the European Regional Development Fund through the Interreg North West Europe Programme under the ITEG project.
This project has also received support under the framework of the OCEANERA-NET COFUND project, with funding provided by national / regional sources and co-funding by the European Union’s Horizon2020 research and innovation programme.
