ORBITAL MARINE POWER LIMITED

Their core work

Orbital Marine Power is a Scottish tidal energy technology company that designs, builds, and deploys floating tidal stream turbines for commercial electricity generation. Based in Orkney — one of Europe's most energetic tidal sites — they develop full-scale floating tidal energy devices and drive the path from demonstration to commercial deployment. Their work spans the entire technology chain: from turbine design and subsystem engineering to techno-economic analysis and grid integration, including emerging power-to-X applications for converting tidal electricity into hydrogen or synthetic fuels.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Orbital Marine Power's H2020 journey shows a clear trajectory from proving their technology works to scaling it commercially. Their early project FloTEC (2016) focused on demonstrating floating tidal energy viability and de-risking the technology, while their participation in DTOceanPlus (2018) contributed to broader ocean energy design infrastructure. By 2021, FORWARD-2030 — their largest project at over €10.5M — signals a decisive shift toward industrial-scale deployment and diversification into energy systems integration and power-to-X, moving well beyond single-device demonstration.

Orbital is moving from proving tidal energy works to deploying it at gigawatt scale with energy storage and hydrogen production — a partner positioned for the industrialisation phase of marine renewables.

How they like to work

Orbital Marine Power strongly prefers to lead: they coordinated 2 of their 3 H2020 projects, including their largest. With 40 unique consortium partners across 13 countries, they operate as a hub organisation that assembles diverse European teams rather than returning to the same small group. This suggests they are confident project leaders who can manage large, multi-national Innovation Action consortia — useful for anyone looking for an experienced coordinator in the marine energy space.

Orbital has built a broad European network of 40 partners across 13 countries through just 3 projects, indicating large consortia with diverse expertise. Their Orkney base places them at the heart of Europe's tidal energy testing infrastructure (EMEC), giving them natural connections to the marine energy research community.

What sets them apart

Orbital Marine Power is one of very few companies globally that has built, deployed, and operated a full-scale floating tidal turbine — most competitors use seabed-mounted designs. Their Orkney location gives them direct access to EMEC, Europe's premier marine energy test centre, and real Atlantic tidal conditions. For consortium builders, they bring something rare: an SME that can both coordinate large EU projects (€10M+) and deliver actual hardware in the water, not just research papers.

Highlights from their portfolio

• FORWARD-2030
  Their largest project (€10.5M EC funding) as coordinator, targeting deployment of 2030MW of tidal energy with power-to-X integration — an unusually ambitious scale-up goal for an SME.
• FloTEC
  The foundational project (€7M) that demonstrated their floating tidal energy platform at commercial scale, establishing Orbital as a credible device developer.
• DTOceanPlus
  Their only participant role — contributing real-world device experience to open-source ocean energy design tools used across the sector.