Sabella SAS was a French company which developed and manufactured tidal stream turbines. It was a

SME ''Sme'' (stylized as ''SME'') or ''Denník Sme'' () is one of the widely-read mainstream broadsheets in Slovakia. Its website is one of the most-visited internet portals in Slovakia. Ownership status In June 2016, the Antimonopoly Office appro ...

, founded in 2008, and based in

Quimper Quimper (, ; ; or ) is a Communes of France, commune and Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Finistère Departments of France, department of Brittany (administrative region), Brittany in northwestern France. Administration Quimper is the ...

, Brittany. Sabella tested two turbines at sea. Firstly, the D03 in the

Odet The Odet (; ) is a river in western France (Finistère department), which runs from Saint-Goazec (near Leuhan, in the Montagnes Noires of Brittany) into the Atlantic Ocean at Bénodet. The name of the town of Bénodet comes from the river; '' ...

estuary between 2008 and 2009, which was the first tidal stream turbine connected to the French electricity grid. They then developed and tested the larger, commercial-scale, D10 turbine from 2015 onwards in the Fromveur Passage. , it remains operational, although operated by Inyanga Marine Energy Group. The Sabella company was placed into receivership in October 2023, and liquidated on 19 January 2024 by the Commercial Court of Quimper.

History

The original concept was conceived in 1999. In 2000 the company was formed, and conducted numerous studies. The Sabella consortium was established in 2007 by the current shareholders. A year later, they founded the company Sabella SAS. In 2008, Sabella launched the first French underwater tidal turbine, the Sabella D03, which was installed near Bénodet, at the mouth of the

Estuary. The experience gained and the results obtained with this project allowed the company to think about a full-scale pre-commercial turbine, the Sabella D10. In 2009, Sabella responded to a call for "Marine Energy Demonstrators" from (ADEME). Sabella won the this in partnership with

Ifremer The or Ifremer is an oceanographic institution in Brest, France. A state-run and funded scientific organization, it is France’s national integrated marine science research institute. Scope of works Ifremer focuses its research activities in ...

Veolia Environnement Veolia Environnement S.A., branded as Veolia, is a French transnational company with activities in three main service and utility areas traditionally managed by public authorities – water management, waste management and energy services. In 2 ...

and

Bureau Veritas Bureau Veritas is a French company specialized in testing, inspection and certification founded in 1828. It operates in a variety of sectors, including building and infrastructure (27% of revenue), agri-food and commodities (23% of revenue), mar ...

, enabling the project to be partly financed by Investissements d'Avenir. Between 2013 and 2014, the Sabella D10 was built then assembled in the Port of Brest in the first half of 2015. In June 2015, the turbine was immersed in the Passage du Fromveur, off the island of

Ushant Ushant (; , ; , ) is a French island at the southwestern end of the English Channel which marks the westernmost point of metropolitan France. It belongs to Brittany and in medieval times, Léon. In lower tiers of government, it is a commune in t ...

(). After a year of testing, the turbine was recovered on 13 July 2016. On 30 June 2014, Sabella finalised a €4.3 million fund raiser, with capital from two investment funds, Go Capital Amorçage and Emertec 5, as well as the CMI Group, the and the Farinia Group. Since then,

BPI France BPI may refer to: Banks *Banca Popolare Italiana, an Italian bank merged into Banco Popolare * Banco Português de Investimento, a Portuguese bank *Bank of the Philippine Islands, the oldest bank in the Philippines *Bpifrance, a French bank Busine ...

and

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

have also invested in Sabella. In 2016,

invested €8 million. In 2019, Sabella was one of the first set of companies in the Energy Transition Accelerator run by ADEME and BPI France. In January 2021, Sabella acquired the technologies developed by

as GE Renewable Energy, including by Rolls Royce, Alstom, and Tidal Generation Ltd (TGL). In October 2023, the company was placed into receivership. Then in December, partner organisation Entech, also based in Quimper, acquired Sabella's assets and hired the 19 employees. However Entech did not acquire the D10 turbine, which was supplying about 75% of the power needs of Ushant. This turbine was later acquired and operated by the British company Inyanga Marine Energy Group. In January 2024, the company was liquidated.

The technology

Sabella's technology is based on the principles of technological simplicity and robustness, giving it greater reliability and lower maintenance requirements than more sophisticated solutions. The main characteristics are as follows: * Symmetrical blades, which allow the turbine to capture both the ebb and flood tide without having to rotate through 180 degrees. * Modular architecture: the Sabella turbine is composed of two parts, with a heavy gravity base placed on the seabed ensuring stability of the turbine against the water current. The turbine is mounted on top of this, and is much lighter, which allows it to be easily replaced for maintenance. * Generator with direct drive and permanent magnets, to avoid any complex mechanical element subject to additional failure and to more regular maintenance. * Turbine placed on the seabed, which allows it to be invisible from the surface, not to interfere with navigation, and be less exposed to hydrodynamic loads linked to the wave swell in intermediate water depths. The D10 turbine was mounted on a tubular steel tripod foundation approximately 23 m wide, with the turbine 12.5 m above the seabed.

Sabella D03

The Sabella D03 was an experimental project led by the Sabella consortium with the support of local public bodies and ADEME, and with technical support from

. It consisted of designing, constructing, and testing a 1/3-scale prototype tidal turbine. It was submerged off the coast of Bénodet, in the

Estuary, in April 2008 for a period of one year. The rotor had a diameter of , and was rated at 10 kW power. Numerous tests and measurements were carried out, including demonstrating its safety towards

fish A fish (: fish or fishes) is an aquatic animal, aquatic, Anamniotes, anamniotic, gill-bearing vertebrate animal with swimming fish fin, fins and craniate, a hard skull, but lacking limb (anatomy), limbs with digit (anatomy), digits. Fish can ...

and its low noise . This tidal turbine is now on the forecourt of Oceanopolis in Brest, as an educational object.

Sabella D10 demonstrator

The Sabella D10 demonstrator project was supported by ADEME via . This led to the development of a commercial scale turbine, with a diameter of and a power output of 1 MW. Construction of the turbine started in June 2012. The blades are carbon fibre and were constructed by

CDK Technologies CDK Technologies is a boat building company now located in Lorient (France) with a primary site in marine hub of Port-la-Forêt. It was founded in 1984, it specializes in the construction of prototype sailboats for offshore racing. History an ...

, a shipyard for offshore racing boats based in Port-la-Forêt in

Finistère Finistère (, ; ) is a Departments of France, department of France in the extreme west of Brittany. Its prefecture is Quimper and its largest city is Brest, France, Brest. In 2019, it had a population of 915,090.Passage du Fromveur, between the island of

and the Molène archipeligo, at a depth of . The tidal currents in this straight can reach . It was connected to the Enedis de Ouessant power grid on 5 November 2015 at 23:00, making it the first grid-connected tidal stream turbine in France. It remained in place for a year of testing. This included extensive monitoring and instrumentation to have feedback on production, performance, resistance, environmental impact, social acceptance, etc. The project partners included

for the

life-cycle analysis Life cycle assessment (LCA), also known as life cycle analysis, is a methodology for assessing the impacts associated with all the stages of the life cycle of a commercial product, process, or service. For instance, in the case of a manufact ...

of the turbine, Ifremer for underwater acoustics and the ageing of materials in the marine environment, and Bureau Veritas for the validation of the mechanical and manufacturing studies with an objective of future certification. The Iroise Marine Natural Park studied the impacts of the turbine within its boundary. The cost of the project was estimated to be around 13–14 million euro in 2015. In October 2015, hackers attacked the satellite communication system for the D10 turbine, blocking electricity generation for 15 days. They encrypted access to communications and demanded a ransom of 4,000 dollars for the decryption key, although they were not successful; the terminal was changed and additional security measures installed. The subsea cables and connections for the project were developed by MacArtney. After being submerged in 2015–2016, the Sabella D10 turbine was recovered in order to improve the system and for maintenance. In October 2018, the turbine was submerged back to the same place (between Molène and Ouessant) and continued operating until April 2019. In April 2022, the D10 water turbine is again immersed for a third test run. In September 2023, it was reported the turbine was supplying around 25% of the electricity used on Ushant Island. The project was taken over by the British company Inyanga Marine Energy Group in October 2024. The Falmouth-based company secured permission to operate the D10 turbine until August 2028.

Environmental and societal impact

Due to the very low speed of rotation of its blades (10 to 15 revolutions per minute), the turbine presents little danger to underwater fauna and flora. In addition, the acoustic emission of Sabella D03 was measured during the year it was submerged in the Odet. The impact on underwater fauna (fish, marine mammals and crustaceans) has been shown to be very low. These results should be considered with caution, as the signature varies from one machine to another and the acoustic emergence on a site is related to the background noise of the site (the higher the current, the stronger the background noise is). The Iroise Marine Natural Park also hoped that the behaviour of seals in the vicinity of the water be studied. Finally, as the Sabella water turbine is placed on the seabed on a gravity foundation, no drilling is therefore carried out in the soil. In January 2013, an official of the group of environmentalists and independents of Ushant called for the "faster" establishment of tidal turbines, to secure the island's power supply.

Partnerships

In June 2012, Sabella signed a partnership agreement with Eole Génération, a subsidiary of GDF Suez that has since become ENGIE Futures Energies. This partnership between the energy company and the turbine developer aims both to enhance the energy of the Fromveur site, and pre-qualify the technology for future commercial exploitation of the currents on this site. Since 2016, Akuo has partnered with Sabella to build a water turbine farm off the coast of Breton. Sabella negotiated a contract for six tidal turbines with a Filipino developer, and hopes to reduce the cost of its machines from 7 down to 4 million euro. In June 2021, Sabella signed a partnership agreement with the Scottish company Nova Innovation to develop tidal projects in France and the United Kingdom. Sabella then announced in January 2022 joint plans with Nova Innovation to each develop 6 MW of a 12 MW berth at Morlais.

Future plans

Eussabella project

A pilot farm project in the Passage du Fromveur was proposed by Sabella, called "Eussabella", from a contraction of the

Breton language Breton (, , ; or in Morbihan) is a Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic languages, Celtic language group spoken in Brittany, part of modern-day France. It is the only Celtic language still widely in use on the European mainland, albei ...

name for

, , and Sabella. This was to consist of four D12 machines and it would supply the island of Ushant, which is not connected to the continental network. The turbines would be combined with an energy storage system and other forms of renewable energy, ensuring the continuity of electricity supply during periods of lower current. A call for expressions of interest was published by ADEME on 1 October 2013 for the installation of such pilot farms in the Fromveur and Raz Blanchard. Sabella submitted a proposal in partnership with ENGIE for the installation of a pilot farm at Fromveur. As this was not selected, Sabella again applied for an island energy project with the French energy company AKUO. In the longer term, Sabella hoped to develop commercial tidal farms, specifically at Fromveur, but also elsewhere in France, Europe and the world.

Other technologies

In addition to tidal stream turbines Sabella developed other concepts, including river turbines. The Canadian subsidiary Sabella Energy Inc. developed the Sabella River SR-01, and in 2011 expected to test it in the

St. Lawrence River The St. Lawrence River (, ) is a large international river in the middle latitudes of North America connecting the Great Lakes to the North Atlantic Ocean. Its waters flow in a northeasterly direction from Lake Ontario to the Gulf of St. Lawren ...

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in summer 2012. A floating subsurface turbines concept was also being studies, under the name Sequana.{{Citation needed, date=November 2024

References

Renewable energy companies of France Hydroelectric power companies Tidal stream generators Marine energy