The ‘world’s most powerful tidal turbine’ starts to export power to the grid

Published

4 years ago

July 31, 2021

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A tidal turbine weighing 680 metric tons and dubbed “the world’s most powerful” has started grid-connected power generation at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney, an archipelago located north of mainland Scotland.

The news marks another major step forward for the U.K.’s nascent marine energy sector.

In an announcement Wednesday, Scottish engineering firm Orbital Marine Power explained how its 2 megawatt O2 turbine had been anchored in a body of water called the Fall of Warness, with a subsea cable linking it to a local electricity network on land.

It’s expected that the turbine, which is 74-meters long, will “operate in the waters off Orkney for the next 15 years” and have “the capacity to meet the annual electricity demand of around 2,000 UK homes.”

The turbine is also set to send power to a land-based electrolyzer that will generate so-called green hydrogen. In a statement, Orbital Marine Power’s CEO Andrew Scott described Wednesday’s news as “a major milestone for the O2.”

Funding for the O2’s construction has come from public lenders via Abundance Investment. The Scottish government has also provided £3.4 million (around $4.72 million) of support through its Saltire Tidal Energy Challenge Fund.

Michael Matheson, the Scottish government’s cabinet secretary for net zero, energy and transport said his country was “ideally-placed to harness the enormous global market for marine energy.”

“The deployment of Orbital Marine Power’s O2, the world’s most powerful tidal turbine, is a proud moment for Scotland and a significant milestone in our journey to net zero,” he went on to add.

Looking to the future, Orbital Marine Power said it was “setting its sights” on the commercialization of its tech via the deployment of multi-megawatt arrays.

With miles of coastline, the U.K. as a whole is home to a number of projects related to marine energy.

In April, it was announced that a year-long research project focusing on the potential of tidal, wave and floating wind technology had secured support from Marine-i, a program centered around innovation in areas such as marine energy.

The project will be based on the Isles of Scilly, an archipelago located off the southwest coast of England, and led by Isles of Scilly Community Venture, Planet A Energy and Waves4Power.

There’s also potential when it comes to rivers. Back in March, the Port of London Authority gave the go ahead for trials of tidal energy technology on a section of the River Thames, a move which could eventually help to decarbonize operations connected to the river.

While interest in marine-based energy systems appears to be growing, the current footprint of the industry and its technologies remains small.

Figures from Ocean Energy Europe show that only 260 kilowatts (kW) of tidal stream capacity was added in Europe last year, while just 200 kW of wave energy was installed.

By contrast, 2020 saw 14.7 gigawatts of wind energy capacity installed in Europe, according to industry body WindEurope.

Environment

Elon Musk’s Tesla launches bid to supply electricity to British households

Published

4 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Elon Musk's Tesla launches bid to supply electricity to British households

A photo shows the logo on US electric carmaker Tesla’s European headquarters in Amsterdam on May 2, 2025.

Ramon Van Flymen | Afp | Getty Images

Elon Musk’s electric vehicle manufacturer and energy company Tesla is preparing to supply electricity to British households and businesses.

The Texas-based company formally submitted its request for an electricity license to the British energy regulator Ofgem at the end of last month, according to a notice on the watchdog’s website.

If approved, the move could pave the way for Tesla to compete with the big firms that dominate the U.K. energy market from as soon as next year.

The application, first reported by the Sunday Telegraph, came from Tesla Energy Ventures and was signed by Andrew Payne, who runs the firm’s European energy operations.

Tesla, which is best known as one of the world’s leading EV manufacturers, also develops solar energy generation systems and battery energy storage products.

Musk’s company already has an electricity supplier in Texas, called Tesla Electric. The service, which was launched in 2022, allows customers to optimize energy consumption and pays them for selling excess energy back to the grid.

Tesla’s push for a license to supply electricity to British households comes as the company endures a protracted European sales slump.

Data published last week by the U.K.’s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) showed Tesla’s new car sales dropped by nearly 60% to 987 units last month, down from 2,462 a year ago.

In Germany, meanwhile, Tesla car sales fell to 1,110 units in July, down 55.1% from the same month in 2024.

The latest sales figures underscored some of the challenges facing the company, which continues to face stiff competition, particularly from Chinese EV manufacturers, and reputational damage from Musk’s incendiary rhetoric and relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.

Environment

Volvo EX30 ducks 147% tariff threat with Ghent production switch

Published

11 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Volvo EX30 ducks 147% tariff threat with Ghent production switch

Volvo gears up EX30 production in Belgium

In a move that helps the brand duck protectionist anti-Chinese tariffs, Volvo Cars has switched production of its award-winning EX30 models destined for US roads from its Zhangjiakou plant in China to the Ghent facility in Belgium.

Volvo EX30 production began in the company’s Ghent factory back in April, but those first cars were earmarked for the Swedish domestic and European export markets, but that move wasn’t primarily motivated by avoiding tariffs. As Electrive reports, the company seemed happy enough to continue importing its small electric crossover from China and accepting the new 28.8% tariffs (up from 10%), but the wait times to get the vehicles shipped in from China was imply too long.

In 2024, Swedish and German buyers had to wait up to eight months for their EX30 in some cases, according to Volvo Cars’ European boss, Arek Nowinski, per Automotive News. Once production in Ghent is fully up to speed, however, wait times should be cut to about 90 days. Those wait times, and the price hike associated with the tariffs, have hurt sales of the originally Chinese-made Volvo EV. In 2024, for example, the EX30 ranked third in European EV sales, but slipped out of the top 10 first half of 2025.

“The car is now being built in Europe, which means faster delivery times,” Volvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson to Automotive News. “We should return to the sales and market share figures for the EX30 that we had before the introduction of tariffs.”

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Coming to Staying in America

Volvo-EX30-top-selling-EV — Volvo EX30; via Volvo Cars.

The EX30’s switch to Ghent is good news for American fans of the compact, lickety-quick Volvo EV. Now that it’s no longer exclusively made in China, Volvo has decided to give it a stay of execution as it revamps its US product lineup to better align with market trends (read: SUVs) and the changing political landscape (read: tariffs and inflation).

The reason? The Made in China version of the EX30 would virtually unsellable in the US due to the implementation of 147% tariffs on vehicles imported from China. Vehicles imported from Europe, meanwhile, carry just 15% tariffs, keeping the EX30 in a competitive price bracket.

Expect to see both Ghent and South Carolina play an increasingly large role in Volvo’s US product mix – at least for the next three-odd years.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Volvo Cars, Automotive News, via Electrive.

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Environment

BYD is coming with a ridiculous 3,000 hp electric supercar

Published

2 days ago

August 9, 2025

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BYD is coming with a ridiculous 3,000 hp electric supercar

New filings have revealed that BYD is about to release a ridiculous 3,000 hp electric supercar: the Yangwang U9 Track Edition.

BYD already shocked the world when it launched the Yangwang U9, its first all-electric supercar.

It featured four advanced electric motors with a combined power of nearly 1,300 horsepower. The U9 can accelerate from 0 to 62 mph (0 to 100 km/h) in just 2.36 seconds.

With a motor at each wheel and a highly advanced electric-air suspension, the U9 can turn on itself and even jump over potholes.

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But that was only the beginning.

Based on a new filing with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), BYD is preparing to launch a new ‘Track Edition’ of the Yangwang U9:

When an automaker releases a “track” version of a car, it typically primarily features body changes for better aerodynamic performance, adding downforce, and it will also often feature bigger brakes.

The Yangwang U9 ‘Track Edition’ appears to feature all that… and much more.

The filing reveals that BYD updated the motors at each wheel to a new 555 kW motor. That’s a higher-performing motor than in most performance electric vehicles. The U9 Track Edition has four of them for a total of 2,220 kW (3,019 hp).

I would have thought that this was a typo if it wasn’t for the insane electric vehicles coming out of China these days.

Here are a few pictures from the MIIT filing:

There are a lot of performance specs that are not included in the MIIT filing. Therefore, it will be interesting to see when the vehicle is fully unveiled and BYD reveals what kind of performance it can achieve with 3,000 hp packed in 4 electric motors.

Here are a few other features mentioned in the filing:

Standard features: