Home

Ocean tidal streams are one of the key sources of ‘clean’ energy still to be fully commercialised. For the UK alone they could provide up to 16% of the nation’s total electricity requirement and are an essential part of helping to meet carbon emission reduction targets.

10MW Single Installation from ’TRITON’ Platform!

The ‘Triton’ Semi-Submersible Turbine (SST) concept is designed for deep water, such as the 60m deep Pentland Firth - too deep to mount turbines on towers to the seabed economically and too rough for surface floaters to survive.

Instead, the turbines are mounted on semi-submersible spar buoys tethered to the seabed gravity anchorages by a swing-arm

Photo taken from recent testing of scale size unit at the Ifremer test centre France. Photo credit Ifremer/Olivier Dugorna

A key feature is that the turbines use technology and components developed from the wind industry, that already exist and that have been developed over the last 20 years. It is only the support structure that is truly new and innovative.

This site explains the resource available, the principles behind the turbines, how they can be installed, maintained and removed, and what the costs could be. This service is intended for education on tidal energy in general, and on the Triton concept in particular.

However, the problem has been the lack of a cost effective and practical tidal stream system that can meet this challenge. A system must be:

- able to withstand the incredible power of the sea in all conditions

- simple to install, maintain and remove in fast tidal races

- easy to get at to de-foul the marine growth that will inevitably degrade performance

- equipped with a multi-MW capacity....

......and yet still produce power in a highly cost-effective way.