Technology

The Swan technology represents the best in class second generation tidal turbine with cost of energy production at the core of the design. The system offers unrivalled reliability and power capture and is characterised by its simplicity. Only two primary moving parts and an innovative installation platform provide a breakthrough in de-risking the tidal industry.

Although there are many synergies with tidal stream and wind turbine technology, there is a fundamental difference. This is simply that any maintenance requires going offshore. From something as small as replacing a sensor to a complete overhaul, any activity will involve operating in the offshore environment and consequently incurring offshore costs.

The Swan team has addressed this from day one, using offshore engineers to develop the concept. This gave rise to two primary design drivers:

• Minimising failure rates

• De-risking retrieval and deployment

Cost benefit analyses undertaken by Swan indicate that component number reduction is the key to reducing failure rates. The turbine system has only two primary moving parts, the rotor shaft and the yaw shaft. This maximises power capture from different directions whilst providing unrivalled reliability.