Scotrenewables Tidal Power has started work to remove the SR2000 turbine from its test berth at EMEC, in a move to start site preparation work for their optimized 2MW floating tidal turbine.

The SR2000’s withdrawal from service at EMEC follows a year of testing which saw it generate in excess of 3GWh of renewable electricity.

Andrew Scott, CEO, said: “The last 12 months have provided unrivalled validation of our engineering and, more importantly, our low cost, low risk solution for tidal stream energy. Our priority now is to ensure we build on this success with the delivery of our next generation turbine, which is supported by EU Horizon2020 funding under the FloTEC project. Having completed the engineering designs for the SR2-2000, we are now preparing for the build and installation phase – this will see the new, optimized unit installed at EMEC. As such, we need to start preparing the site for that installation and concentrate our resources on the build.”

The new SR2-2000 is scheduled to be launched next year and deployed in the early part of 2020.

Andrew Scott added: “We are immensely proud of what the SR2000 has achieved in its first year of near-continuous operation, having broken all previous records. Its exceptional performance has been widely acknowledged, and we are now in discussions with a number of interested parties on the potential to re-deploy the turbine at other sites internationally.”