Page 42: of Marine Technology Magazine (March 2021)

RENEWABLE ENERGY Tidal Power “...if you just had something go wrong, one little component on the auxiliary system failure, you’d have to lift this whole system up with hundreds of tons to be able to do it. That’s what drove us towards thinking about a ? oating system, and in developing a ? oating system, the real challenge is dealing with the huge loads through the mooring system.” actually now become the largest shareholder in our business.

Among you strategic partners, can you discuss your relationship with Schottel Hydro?

Excellent. So how are you investing in the

Schottel has been in the marine sector for a long, long time coming 12 to 24 months?

with its propulsion units. About 10 years ago now, they start- ed an initiative to start to (leverage their know-how from the The main investment that we’re making this year is in propulsion units) and turn that into a tidal turbine. They have the team and the infrastructure required to deliver our ? rst done some work for other tidal turbine technology developers, 9-MW commercial project at FORCE, which we’re going to supplying drivetrain components and subsystems. And in the be delivering here in phases over the next three to four years. meantime, they’ve been developing this small drivetrain them- So this is about ramping it up; this is about moving from R&D selves. We were partnering with them for a while using their and prototyping into commercial delivery mode. And that, of drivetrain in our early prototypes, then we reached a point course, requires some pretty substantial investments in equip- where we said, “Okay, well, you guys have got part of the sys- ment. We just bought a couple of small support vessels. We’re tem, we’ve got part of the solution. And ultimately all people developing a new rig for anchoring at FORCE because it’s a want is one package.” So we teamed with them, and they’ve pretty brutal environment. 42 March/April 2021

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