UNIQUE TIDAL TURBINE LOGISTICS

LOADING OUT THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL TIDAL TURBINE

Orbital’s marine technology has the potential to unlock a new source of clean, predictable power for millions of people, homes, and businesses around the world. Moored via anchors in a powerful tidal stream or river currents, the tidal turbine’s underwater rotors capture the hugely dense, predictable, renewable energy that flows in the world’s ocean and river currents.

Our marine heritage gives us all the skills needed to handle unique assets, such as tidal turbines, and develop unique plans for transporting and loading them. We deliver fully engineered programmes that combine onshore and offshore movements. All of these were essential when we were contracted to deliver Orbital Marine Power’s ground breaking tidal turbine.

UNIQUE SOLUTION – SUBMERGING A BARGE INTO THE RIVER TAY

As a team, Osprey’s marine heritage provided the transferrable skills necessary to deliver an end-to-end project plan incorporating onshore and offshore specialist logistics.

• The Orbital O2 turbine was assembled in Dundee. A line configuration of Self-Propelled Modular Transporters (SPMTs) moved it to a launch site, where it was loaded onto a barge.
• Submerging the barge – the barge was then taken to the float-off site and submerged to a depth of seven metres, enabling the 02 tidal turbine to float off on the River Tay and be tugged out into position.
• The O2 tidal turbine was installed into its final position at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney, Spring 2021.
• To date, we’re the only British special logistics firm that has the marine heritage, cross-sector engineering skills and owner-operated inventory to support these power producers in end-to-end planning.

Nigel Fletcher, CEO, Osprey: “The innovation behind our logistics lets us develop new methods of logistics’ deployment and enables us to transfer those techniques from one sector to the next. We’ve been working with all kinds of renewables’ clients for more than 25 years. We were thrilled to win this contract and deliver services to a client that has the same shared ethos and values – validating the benefits for the planet of combined engineering expertise and a commitment to delivering cleaner energy.”