The 'world's most powerful tidal turbine' starts to export power to the grid

[Eugene]

Source: CNBC

The ‘world’s most powerful tidal turbine’ starts to export power to the grid

PUBLISHED WED, JUL 28 2021 10:03 AM EDT
Anmar Frangoul

A tidal turbine weighing 680 metric tons and dubbed “the world’s most powerful” has started grid-connected power generation at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney, an archipelago located north of mainland Scotland.

The news marks another major step forward for the U.K.’s nascent marine energy sector.

In an announcement Wednesday, Scottish engineering firm Orbital Marine Power explained how its 2 megawatt O2 turbine had been anchored in a body of water called the Fall of Warness, with a subsea cable linking it to a local electricity network on land.

It’s expected that the turbine, which is 74-meters long, will “operate in the waters off Orkney for the next 15 years” and have “the capacity to meet the annual electricity demand of around 2,000 UK homes.”

The turbine is also set to send power to a land-based electrolyzer that will generate so-called green hydrogen. In a statement, Orbital Marine Power’s CEO Andrew Scott described Wednesday’s news as “a major milestone for the O2.”

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Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/28/worlds-most-powerful-tidal-turbine-starts-to-export-power-to-grid-.html

[mopinko]

1. this makes me so happy.

i've posted before that my father became convinced in the 60's that such power was possible.
he built a model, and consulted w a u of chicago physics prof who concurred w him.
he wanted to put it on that shelf in the pacific, just such a spot.

he most def did not understand how hard it would be to engineer a machine that could withstand those forces. his model would have been crushed in 10 minutes.
but he came up w this w only a small navy book about the physics of waves to go on.

he had other ideas he wanted to patent, but he never succeeded. i feel like it's something i have to do for him.

in the meantime, i get to tell his story.