WATCH: SeaGen Decommissioning Project

SIMEC Atlantis Energy recently decommissioned its SeaGen tidal turbine in Strangford Narrows, Northern Ireland.

The 1.2MW SeaGen is the first commercial scale tidal turbine development to be fully decommissioned.

Keynvor MorLift was appointed as the principal contractor to carry out the decommissioning engineering, planning and offshore works. The final major lift operations included the rigging, cutting and lifting of the over 500 tonne structure by KML which was safely and expertly executed at Strangford Lough.

The SeaGen system was installed in 2008 and became the world’s first commercial scale, electricity generating, grid connected tidal stream project. It exported over 11.6GWh of power during its useful life and the lessons learned from the project have underpinned both present and future global tidal turbine development whilst helping to shape the success of MeyGen, the world’s largest multi-megawatt tidal stream array.

The first phase of decommissioning SeaGen started in May 2016 with the removal of the system’s two 600kW Powertrains. In August 2018 the topsides and crossbeam were removed, and final works were completed with the successful removal of the remaining tower and subsea structure.

Source: SIMEC Atlantis Energy