Recipient organisationOrbital Marine Power Limited
Funding£12.3M
PeriodDec 2023 — Nov 2029
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
A 9.6MW tidal energy farm of four floating turbines will be installed off the European coast in 2027 and operate for 15 years. Tidal stream power is predictable and high-value, with 10GW of potential in European waters and up to 100GW globally, yet only 13MW is currently deployed. The gap is not in the resource itself but in moving from single devices to commercial-scale farms. EURO-TIDES aims to close that gap by demonstrating that a multi-device farm can operate reliably at full scale. If successful, the project would cut the cost of tidal energy from €120/MWh to under €100/MWh, and reduce the cost of capital from 10–12% to 5–6% by providing 17,520 hours of operational data and verifying performance against international standards. The consortium also plans to increase supply chain capacity from one device per year to 80, and raise turbine availability above 95%. All performance and environmental data will be made public to accelerate commercialisation and support a 2GW+ project pipeline. The farm is designed to operate for 15 years, providing a long-term testbed for environmental monitoring and industrial-scale maintenance.
View original technical description
There is 10GW of predictable, high-value tidal stream energy potential in European waters, with up to 100 GW of capacity globally . This is an almost entirely unharnessed clean energy resource, with just 13 MW currently deployed . Transitioning European market leading technologiesfrom single deployments, up to farm scale, isthe next milestone in harnessing this clean, predictable,secure, domestic energy resource. EURO-TIDES has been developed specifically to address the call topic by delivering a 9.6MW farm of four 2.4MW Orbital tidal energy devices of the same series. The farm will operate in full operational conditions for 15 years, deploying in 2027. The EURO TIDES consortium will work collaboratively to deliver six ambitious objectives and drive the sector forwards: 1. De-risking tidal energy technology development by delivering a 9.6MW pilot farm and three pilot farm system innovations; reducing Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) of Orbital’s floating tidal technology from €120/MWh to <€100/MWh. 2. Increase bankability and insurability by providing 17,520 hours of operational data, displaying the production of 50GWh+, and verification of key technology metrics to internationally recognised methodologies: reducing cost of capital from 10%-12% to 5%-6%. 3. Increase availability of tidal stream by creating an efficient robust, replicable, and reliable operations and maintenance programme: increasing availability to 95%+. 4. Improve market confidence by developing industrial design and manufacturing processes: increasing supply chain capacity from one device per annum to 80 devices per annum. 5. Increase knowledge of environmental impacts to ensure appropriate environmental protection and mitigation is in place: enabling safe scalability to a 100GW+ global market. 6. Making performance, reliability and behavior data collected from the demonstration publicly available: accelerating scalability, commercialisation, and deployment of a 2GW+ project pipeline.
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