Minesto’s power production performance in line with simulations

Swedish marine energy company Minesto has delivered its second tidal kite to the Faroe Islands and verified that its power production performance is aligned with simulated predictions.

As part of the continued operations programme in its tidal energy project in the Faroe Islands, Minesto has made significant progress related to electricity generation to grid.

Namely, the company’s DG100 power plant has reached peak power production performance above 110kW, with average power produced over a tidal cycle aligned with predictions in simulation runs.

During March, a second DG100 kite system has been delivered to the Faroe Islands and successfully run in electricity production mode.

The unit, named Drekin after the local word for dragon, incorporates upgrades to improve performance and reliability based on experiences with the first unit, according to Minesto.

Martin Edlund, CEO of Minesto, said: “The new, second DG100 system started operation straight ‘out of the box’ without the need for a long commissioning programme. This means that we now have two systems available in Vestmannasund, which enhances our operational flexibility and efficiency. It is very pleasing that the new DG100 power plant easily reaches its designed performance.

“Among other things, this means that we reach peak power production performance above 110kW at flight speeds above 20 knots. Average power produced over a tidal cycle is aligned with predictions in simulation runs, which reinforces our output expectancies regardless of scale. This is very encouraging results and significant input to the ongoing work of third-party verification”.

In addition, Minesto has completed training of additional onshore and offshore installation staff so that the company now manages all kite system operations and maintenance activities in-house.

As part of the training, Minesto has also optimised the launch and recovery times so that now it takes no longer than 30 minutes to launch or recover a kite system, using a small DP vessel without an ROV.

“With three complete teams of operators, we have established capacity for both long-term operations in the Faroe Islands and secured a much-needed ability to run multiple projects.

“The plan going forward involves intensified operations both for volume generation of electricity to grid and for configuration optimisation to support scale-up and identified performance enhancement”, Edlund added.

To remind, in November 2018, Minesto signed a collaboration agreement with SEV, the main power generator and distributor on the Faroe Islands, for two installations of Minesto’s DG100 model.

More recently, Minesto and Schneider Electric have inked a memorandum of understanding to work together to develop and build ocean energy farms based on Deep Green technology.

The collaboration between the parties is aimed at accelerating the commercial roll-out of marine energy to enable the global transition towards net-zero societies, where energy systems that include plannable, renewable energy production are necessary.