Orbital Marine Power (Orkney) Debenture 1

On a mission to build the world’s most powerful floating tidal stream turbine

Orbital Marine Power was founded as Scotrenewables in 2002 with the aim of finding an efficient way to harness tidal energy.

Since 2003, Orbital has tested its technology at increasing scales, which led to the delivery of the 2 MW SR1-2000 tidal turbine in 2016. The SR1-2000 started delivering power to the grid at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney, Scotland, at the end of 2016 and was in continuous operation without any major maintenance during the last 12 months of its operations until August 2018. Building on 16 years of research and development, the Orbital O2 2MW is a refined and improved version of the previous tidal turbines manufactured.

This investment helped fund the first production model Orbital O2 2MW tidal turbine. The final design is an innovative floating tidal turbine that can be installed and maintained using small, local boats. The project to build and install the new turbine secured more than £9 million in grants and equity funding and a further £7 million raised on Abundance to help make it happen.

As tides rise and fall, the difference between ebb and flood causes water to move, creating currents with significant kinetic energy. Orbital makes use of tidal stream energy by extracting energy from naturally occurring tidal currents without the need for any barrages or dams. It is one of the newest entrants into the renewable energy market and as costs continue to fall it could make a significant contribution to energy generation portfolios in areas around the world featuring large amounts of the resource. Orbital hopes its tidal technology can achieve competitiveness with other renewable energy sources.

This investment was fully repaid on 30 June 2022.