Meygen turbines back in service after ‘world-first’ maintenance exercise

0 ‘World first’ - Simec Atlantis CEO Tim Cornelius Two turbines at the Meygen tidal energy generation project in the Pentland Firth are back in action after what is being hailed as a world-first in the industry.

Simec Atlantis Energy, which is behind the initiative, said that the two Andritz 1.5 megawatt (MW) turbines were serviced on board a vessel rather than having to go back to port. It said it was also the first time that multiple turbines had been handled and serviced at the same time on one vessel.

The company, led by chief executive Tim Cornelius, said the achievement will have “material cost reduction implications” for future maintenance at the project.

It had flagged in July that two of the four turbines at the scheme needed to be removed following diagnosis of a generator fault by onboard monitoring systems.

An Atlantis 1.5MW turbine was also successfully retrieved for maintenance at the firm’s operations base at Nigg Energy Park before being returned to service during the December tidal window when the third Andritz turbine will also be redeployed following completion of its inspection and maintenance programme.

Meygen, which currently has four turbines, is the world’s largest tidal stream array and has 392MW of further development capacity under its seabed lease. The project formally completed its construction and commissioning phase in March.

Simec Atlantis also said yesterday that Andy Richardson had been recruited as the company’s chief operating officer. His previous roles include head of asset management and engineering manager at Alstom Power Service UK and executive director of thermal and renewables at EDF. His latest role was as chief operating officer at Australian energy company Stanwell.