Helping turn the tide
on climate change

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How it works

Orbital’s unique technology delivers a breakthrough in the extraction of clean energy from flowing water.

At the heart of it the technology enables easier access to carry out through-life servicing of turbines whilst offering the lowest costs for manufacture, construction and decommissioning.

Operational

Maintenance mode

Tidal Application

With a global installed capacity estimate of 100 gigawatts, tidal energy harvesting has the potential to power millions of homes, businesses and lives with a dependable form of low-carbon energy.

Full deployment of this resource would generate investment in equipment and services of over £300bn.

Ocean Currents

Currents flow around the world’s oceans as massive, cohesive streams that are continuously moving vast volumes of seawater over huge distances, making the ocean the most environmentally analogous setting for Orbital’s existing technology.

With relatively modest optimisation to Orbital’s existing multi-MW scale, tidal stream technology; phenomenal volumes of clean, dense kinetic energy from ocean currents could be harnessed.

River Application

Scaled down to capture power from river flow, our platform, can support off-grid demands from communities, households and electric vehicle charge points.

The retractable leg design also allows the turbine to be towed through shallow river systems without the need for specialist vessels with minimal environmental disruption and the potential to bring power to individual households.

The Future

Driven out of the most sophisticated tidal engineering program, the Orbital turbine platform is optimised to service the global tidal market cost competitively and enable volume manufacturing.

Building on the reliable nature of tidal energy our technology is designed to play a complementary role in future low carbon energy systems.

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The O2

The O2, Orbital’s commercial demonstrator, is the world’s most powerful tidal turbine and has been operational since July 2021 in Orkney, where it is connected to the UK electricity grid. It is a 74m long floating superstructure, supporting two 1 MW turbines on either side for a nameplate power output of 2MW.

It can generate enough clean, predictable electricity to meet the demand of around 2,000 UK homes and offset approximately 2,200 tonnes of CO2 production per year.

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Helping turn the tide on climate change