Tocardo
Tocardo is a Dutch company focusing on the development of tidal turbines.
In 2015, Tocardo installed three linked turbines in the Afsluitdijk, a 30 km long primary sea defence in The Netherlands, with a total capacity of 300 kW. Another Tocardo turbine in the Afsluitdijk has been providing electricity for over seven years. Together with Bluewater and a group of leading offshore companies, Tocardo has also deployed its first offshore floating tidal energy project at the Island of Texel in The Netherlands.
Further still, together with Huisman, builder and designer of the turbine’s support structure, Tocardo have installed five tidal turbines in the Eastern Scheldt storm surge barrier (Oosterschelde barrier): the world’s largest tidal installation consisting of five turbines in an array.
In February 2016, Tocardo signed up to demonstrate a 20 year pre-commercial array at EMEC’s Fall of Warness tidal energy test site. Tocardo planned to install eight T2 turbines across two Tocardo systems.
Supported by the FORESEA programme, the first T2 turbine was tested at EMEC during 2017 as part of Tocardo’s Temporary Foundation System (TFS).
Learning from this project was fed into the Horizon 2020 funded InToTidal project which aimed to enhance tidal energy production, developing low-load mooring systems, low-cost anchoring solutions, subsea dynamic umbilicals and new installation and service operations. Led by Tocardo, the InToTidal project consortium includes EMEC, Leask Marine and Ifremer. The project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730799.
Since January 2020 Tocardo is fully owned by HydroWing Ltd. and QED Naval Ltd. This joint venture provides an end to end service with a spectrum of turbines, foundation systems, marine operations, as well as design, support and service expertise. Tocardo is the independent tidal turbine developer with a focus on bringing down the life cycle cost of tidal turbines, de-risking the design and increasing the power output at the same time. The company supplies turbines up to 0.5 MW which can be installed in larger numbers enabling projects from community up to utility scale. The turbines can be independently controlled enabling continued generation in the event of individual failure.
Related news:
- January 2020: QED Naval and HydroWing acquiring Tocardo Tidal Power
- October 2019: Bankruptcy Tocardo Tidal Power
- September 2017: World’s first tidal-powered hydrogen generated at EMEC
- June 2017: Tocardo granted RO accreditation for 1.4 MW at EMEC
- March 2017: EMEC tidal site activity ramping up
- February 2017: Orkney – buzzing with marine energy development
- February 2017: Tocardo getting InToTidal in Orkney
- December 2016: €5.6m MET-CERTIFIED project launched
- June 2016: €3.9m innovation funding for tidal energy in Orkney
- February 2016: Tocardo sign up to test 20-year T2 tidal array at EMEC
