Sweden-based Minesto (minesto.com), a leading marine energy developer, has progressed its tidal energy project in the Faroe Islands. The company has completed the first offshore installation phase of the project, as the gravity-based foundation for the power plant has been installed at the site in Vestmannasund.

David Collier, COO at Minesto, said: “We are very pleased to have the first sub-sea hardware in place. The operations team has managed to safely progress the offshore installation campaign, adapting the plan to overcome both unfavourable weather conditions and logistical challenges related to the ongoing pandemic.”

The novel gravity-based foundation, designed and fabricated by Leask Marine on Orkney, consists of a base frame and a number of doughnut-shaped ballast weights. Each component has been individually lowered to the seabed using the Leask multicat vessel C-Fenna.

The foundation will provide the connection point for Minesto’s DG100 tidal kite system. When installed to the foundation, the bottom joint of the kite system provides a pivoting connection point for the tether, allowing the kite to operate freely in its automatically controlled figure-of-eight trajectory. This enables the system to generate predictable renewable tidal electricity.

Mr Collier continued: “The gravity-based structure developed for the Vestmannasund project has a new cost-effective modular design, which among other things means that we can use smaller vessels for transportation and installation.”

The next installation phase involves the sub-sea export cable that distributes electricity generated by the powerplant to the electric grid operated by Minesto’s partner SEV.