Nautricity recovers tidal turbine for check-up

Glasgow-based tidal energy developer Nautricity has retrieved its tidal turbine from the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) to conduct system assessment.

Illustration/Nautricity's turbine (Photo: Mike Brookes-Roper/Nautricity)

The retrieval operation was conducted by Leask Marine’s operations team using company’s vessel the MV C-Odyssey, the Orkney-based marine renewables services provider informed.

The 500kW device was recovered from the seabed at EMEC’s Fall of Warness grid-connected tidal test site, where it was deployed in April 2017.

The retrieval operation of 500kW CoRMaT device (Photo: Leask Marine)

After the retrieval, the CoRMaT turbine was towed to nearshore Eday where diving operations were performed before the turbine was towed to Hatston Pier for recovery to land.

The recovery of the turbine is part of Nautricity’s plan to investigate and analyze the turbine, supporting systems and data to assess the impact of exposure after an extended period of deployment, according to EMEC.

CoRMaT is a contra-rotating turbine which uses two closely spaced dissimilar rotors, moving in opposite directions, to drive the rotor and rotating stator sections of an electrical generator.