MAROKO133 Update ai: 7 of the world’s most powerful tidal turbines generating megawatts un

📌 MAROKO133 Update ai: 7 of the world’s most powerful tidal turbines generating me

Tides are predictable years in advance, unlike wind or sunlight. Because of this reliability, harnessing the energy of ocean tides has long appealed to engineers. The difficulty lies in building machines large enough to capture meaningful amounts of power while surviving one of the harshest environments on Earth. 

Only a handful of tidal turbines have reached megawatt-scale capacity, and even fewer have delivered sustained, grid-connected performance at sea. This list highlights some of the largest tidal turbines developed to date, including both operational systems and landmark prototypes that shaped today’s technology.

1) Orbital O2 – 2 MW Floating Tidal Turbine, Scotland, UK

The Orbital O2 is widely regarded as the most powerful operational tidal turbine currently in service. Commissioned in July 2021, this floating tidal generator is installed at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC)’s Fall of Warness test site off the Orkney Islands and is grid-connected via subsea cable to the local electricity network. 

It features a 2 MW nameplate capacity, achieved through two 1 MW rotors mounted on a 242 feet (74 meter) floating superstructure, which is moored in fast-flowing tidal currents. A key innovation is its retractable leg design, which provides surface maintenance access and reduces the need for heavy vessels. 

The 65 feet (20 meter) diameter rotors provide a large swept area for capturing tidal kinetic energy at speeds exceeding 3 m/s, and the device is expected to operate for up to 15 years. Building on earlier prototypes, O2’s success demonstrates that large floating tidal turbines can reliably deliver predictable renewable power into a real grid.

2) ScotRenewables SR2000 – 2 MW Floating Tidal Turbine, Scotland, UK

The SR2000 was a pioneering 2 MW floating tidal turbine developed by ScotRenewables Tidal Power (now Orbital Marine Power) and tested at EMEC’s Fall of Warness site starting in late 2016. As a full-scale prototype, it was engineered to demonstrate utility-class tidal energy generation and successfully operated in harsh North Atlantic conditions. 

Over its testing programme in 2017-2018, the SR2000 achieved full-rated output, exported power to the local grid, and generated in excess of 3 GWh of renewable electricity over approximately 12 months, a level of output that exceeded the cumulative generation previously recorded across Scotland’s wave and tidal sector. It also endured sea states with waves over 13 feet (4 meters) and maintained generation power during winter storms. 

At times, it supplied up to 25 percent of the Orkney Islands’ electricity demand during continuous generation periods. The machine was removed in September 2018 to make way for the next-generation Orbital O2 turbine, marking the SR2000 as a historic milestone in tidal turbine engineering.

3) SIMEC Atlantis AR2000 – 2 MW-Rated Single-Rotor Tidal Turbine (Design Context)

The SIMEC Atlantis AR2000 is a 2 MW-rated tidal turbine design representing one of the largest single-rotor platforms promoted in the tidal energy sector. Developed by SIMEC Atlantis Energy, the AR2000 was unveiled with design specifications targeting 2 MW output, and its scale positions it among the highest-capacity individual tidal turbines proposed. 

While not yet widely deployed as a grid-connected, operational single unit at the time of reporting, SIMEC Atlantis highlighted the AR2000’s large rotor diameter and output potential as a next step in scaling tidal stream energy beyond earlier 1.5 MW designs like the AR1500. This turbine’s rating reflects industry efforts to push the limits of tidal turbine capacity and contributes to broader device scaling in tidal power markets.

4) AR1500 (MeyGen) – 1.5 MW seabed tidal turbine, Scotland, UK

The AR1500 is a 1.5-MW tidal stream turbine deployed at Scotland’s MeyGen project in the Inner Sound of the Pentland Firth, which is one of the most extensively studied tidal stream projects globally. These are 1.5-MW rated turbines with 18-meter rotor diameters, installed on seabed foundations in high-velocity tidal channels. 

The design uses pitch control to maintain output above a rated flow speed and a yaw module to reorient between ebb and flood tides. In practice, AR1500-class machines helped establish multi-turbine, grid-export tidal generation at utility scale, making them a benchmark for modern tidal deployments.

5) Minesto Dragon 12 – 1.2 MW tidal “kite” turbine, Faroe Islands

Minesto’s Dragon 12 is a utility-scale tidal “kite” rated at 1.2 MW and designed to generate energy by flying on a controlled trajectory underwater. Instead of relying on a fixed seabed tower, the system harvests energy by flying a controlled underwater trajectory.

Minesto reports the system was commissioned in February 2024 at the Vestmanna site in the Faroe Islands and delivered its first electricity to the national grid on February 9, 2024. The company describes Dragon 12 as a 12-meter-wide, 28-ton subsea kite tethered to the seabed, operated through an “8-shaped” flight path to increase effective flow speed across its turbine.

6) SeaGen – 1.2 MW pioneering commercial tidal turbine, Northern Ireland, UK

SeaGen was one of the most important early commercial-scale tidal turbines, installed in Strangford Lough and rated at 1.2 MW using two 600-kW turbines on a pile-mounted structure. It was commissioned in 2008 and decommissioned in 2019, with industry reports confirming its 1.2-MW capacity. 

Project documentation notes a total investment of around £12 million, reflecting the cost of proving a large tidal device in a real marine environment. While smaller than today’s <a href="https://interestingengineering.com/lists/2…

Konten dipersingkat otomatis.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com

📌 MAROKO133 Eksklusif ai: Optical nuclear clock closer to reality with new Thorium

A collaboration between researchers in the US and Germany has made a major breakthrough in optical nuclear clocks, achieving laser-based excitation of Thoria-229 in a non-transparent host material.

This advancement is expected to open a new class of materials for nuclear laser spectroscopy and to enable technological feats such as an optical nuclear clock, according to a press release.

In our day-to-day lives, measurement of time is extremely important. Losing a few hours might mean you are late for lunch or an important meeting. Even minutes look precious when you miss a train, as you arrive at the station. But a few seconds here and there should not really matter, right? 

Unknown to you, this accurate measurement of seconds ensures that your GPS is telling you to run at the right time, or that the energy provided to the grid is at the same frequency.

Go a little deeper, and scientists can figure out fundamental physics with even more accurate measurements of time. But how does one measure something smaller than seconds, accurately? That’s where atomic clocks come in. 

Atomic versus nuclear clocks

In 1873, James Maxwell proposed measuring time by measuring the vibrations of light waves. But it was only in 1955 that the National Physics Laboratory in the UK made the first atomic clock using caesium atoms. A surge followed this in research for atomic clocks and the arrival of a new definition for a second. 

Over the years, scientists have built atomic clocks using elements such as mercury, strontium, and ytterbium, advancing technologies such as satellite navigation, telecommunications, and even accurate timestamps for financial transactions. 

However, scientists have recognized the shortcomings of atomic clocks, which rely on the energy levels of bound electron states to function. These are susceptible to external magnetic and electric fields, prompting researchers to look for better alternatives. 

Because the atomic nucleus is several orders of magnitude smaller than the atom itself, it is more resilient to external factors, leading to the idea of nuclear clocks.

The concept of a nuclear clock is so recent that it was only in 2024 that researchers, for the first time, managed to directly excite a Thorium atom with a laser. Even then, the experiments with Th-229 had been successful only in host materials transparent to 148 nm laser light. 

Excitation in a non-transparent material

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have now succeeded in achieving this laser excitation in a non-transparent material. 

This achievement allows stabilization of thorium atoms while remaining opaque to the laser light, thereby broadening the range of substances that can be used. 

“This success opens the door to a previously inaccessible area of nuclear physics,” explained Lars von der Wense, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Physics at JGU, who first proposed the experiment in 2017.

“The fact that we can now also perform nuclear excitation in non-transparent materials enables completely new experiments – and brings us a significant step closer to realizing an optical nuclear clock.”

Not only would the optical nuclear clock provide us with the most accurate time standard in the history of humanity, but it would also further improve satellite-based navigation and support autonomous transport. 

Beyond optical nuclear clocks, the feat also opens new avenues for experimentation, such as laser-based IC Mössbauer spectroscopy, enabling the investigation of atomic nuclei in solid-state environments.

Scientists will also be able to probe for temporal variations in constants of nature and intensify their search for dark matter, the press release added. 

The research findings were published in the journal Nature.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com