Two turbines up and running at MeyGen

Atlantis Resources has reinstalled and reconnected two of the four turbines of the MeyGen tidal array Phase 1A project.

The three Andritz Hydro Hammerfest (AHH) turbines were recovered earlier this year after an initial period of operations to enable AHH to implement system enhancements derived from the lessons learned during installation and subsea commissioning.

Following the program of turbine improvements, two of the three AHH turbines were reinstalled and have restarted power generation to the grid.

The third AHH turbine is due to be reinstalled during the next workable neap tide which is in August, together with the Atlantis AR1500 turbine.

The AR1500 turbine was also retrieved in the spring of this year to assess the effects of a prolonged grid connection outage which was caused by damage to part of the onshore power distribution network near the MeyGen site, according to Atlantis.

Atlantis said the cable damage has since been repaired and the site’s grid export capacity has been restored.

However, after assessing the turbine, Atlantis decided that one of the components of the turbine’s pitching system should be replaced and upgraded as a result of the exposure to an unexpectedly long idle cycle.

Tim Cornelius, Chief Executive of Atlantis, said: “Both turbines have already operated at or close to full power since redeployment. Prior to retrieval of the turbines in the spring we had already achieved significant autonomous operation at full output and the power performance of both turbine types showed improvements over the contractual output guarantees. We expect this to put the project on track to achieve capacity factors significantly in excess of 40%.”

Atlantis said the commissioning and autonomous operation had been well progressed following initial installation, and that it is expected that full power will be achieved from each turbine soon after redeployment.

The turbines will then enter into their final contractual performance and autonomous reliability tests after which they will be signed off for the start of long term operations.

Atlantis expects that MeyGen Phase 1A will be operating autonomously at full 6MW capacity by the end of Q3 this year.