Schottel, SME take on Asian tides

Schottel Hydro has deployed a floating tidal platform off Singapore, and through the partnership with Sustainable Marine Energy (SME) is looking to add another tidal demo project to the waters of Southeast Asia.

The turbine, attached to a catamaran deployment platform, has been deployed off Sentosa island in Singapore last week, Schottel Hydro informed.

The work was conducted in collaboration with Nanyang Technological University’s Energy Research Institute, using the local shipyard LitaOcean.

Singapore-based innovation company, OceanPixel managed the project, while Aquatera supervised the deployment and marine operations which also included tow testing conducted in December 2016.

Furthermore, SME signed a deal with a local shipyard to deploy its first floating PLAT-I platform for a demonstration project in Singapore waters. This platform will host four Schottel Hydro SIT250 turbines.

The move comes as two companies agreed to work together to deploy integrated systems into the Southeast Asian market.

Jason Hayman, Managing Director at SME, said: “The opportunity for deploying systems into the off and micro grid markets within Southeast Asia is very significant. These market opportunities also suit the size of our current platform offering and our stage of development extremely well. If we can prove that tidal stream energy can compete effectively with small scale diesel generation, then we are well on our way to proving its commercial viability.”