French tidal energy company Sabella has started new set of tests on its D10 tidal energy turbine ahead of its deployment off France planned for August at the earliest.
The equipment of the D10 tidal turbine, whose rated capacity reaches up to 1MW, is currently put to functional electrical tests, that will be followed with the final assembly, according to Sabella.
The assembly, that will include welding of the nacelle and blade installation, among other activities, will take place together with offshore commissioning tests on a load bank.
According to the developer, the target is to prepare the turbine for deployment back to its foundations in the Fromveur Passage, off Ushant island, by the end of summer – in August, or September 2018.
To remind, the original plans to redeploy the D10 tidal turbine for the second round of sea trials – scheduled for 2017 – have been pushed back to this year to conduct ‘additional works … absolutely necessary in the learning and maturation process of such cutting-edge energy solutions’, Sabella said earlier.
The work is being done as part of the optimization process for the turbine ahead of its three-year deployment, for which Sabella secured the permit from French authorities.
“As we identified the conversion as a weak point but absolutely necessary in future multi devices arrays – possibility to gather production of several turbines to export through only one cable to the shore – we have implemented a full redundancy for this second trial period,” said Jean-Christophe Allo , Business Development Manager for Sabella.
Sabella’s D10 turbine has a rotor diameter of 10 meters, and is 17 meters tall with the weight of around 400 tons. During its 2015-2016 deployment off Ushant island, the turbine successfully fed clean electricity to the French national power grid.