Tidal turbines deployed in Irish inlet

ORPC, which set up the subsidiary ORPC Ireland in 2015, believes that offshore renewable energy will be the number one source of power generation in Europe by 2050.

Working with Queen’s University Belfast, ORPC Ireland has deployed and begun testing the turbine at the Strangford Lough Tidal Test Site in the east of Northern Ireland.

It is the first time ORPC has generated electricity outside North America, where it has already installed 17 both in Canada and America.

The RivGen Power System turbines are modular to make assembly, transport, installation and recovery easier. They are designed for operation in remote and rural areas where heavy-lift equipment and large marine vessels may not always be available.

They are also designed to plug into existing off-grid systems. 

In Northern Ireland, the installation is part of what is called the ’X-Flow’ project, which is being led by Queen’s University Belfast and its partners Applied Renewables Research and Shell Technology – Marine Renewable Program, supported by the government’s Green Innovation Challenge Fund.

“The Queen’s Marine Laboratory (QML) Tidal Test Site in Strangford Lough is a unique facility providing developers the opportunity to deploy and monitor their technology in real tidal flows,” said Queens senior lecturer Carwyn Frost.

“The X-Flow project will provide unique insight on the impact of turbulent flow conditions on the control of the crossflow turbine and its blade loading. The fully instrumented turbine by ORPC will provide vital data for assessing the impact of turbulent flow conditions on performance, blade loading and control.

“This work will facilitate condition monitoring for predictive maintenance approaches and validation data for numerical simulations. The team at QML looks forward to delivering successful on water testing in collaboration with our industry partners.”

Data collected from the project will be used to validate and improve tidal energy turbine models.