The first offshore wave machine to generate electricity into the UK grid, which was deployed off Orkney, is to be sent to the scrapyard.

The Pelamis Wave, known as the Sea Snake, was installed at the European Marine Energy Centre in 2004. At the time ministers hailed the installation as a “vital milestone” in Scotland’s drive to become a world leader in harnessing sea power for renewable energy.

The semi-submerged machine, which originally included five connected red tubes, was expected to generate 3MW of electricity, enough to power about 2,000 homes, by converting the movement of the waves into energy.

But the company went into administration in 2014 and the device was bought by Orkney Islands council for £1 three years later. It was originally valued at £2 million. After failing to find a use for it, the council will spend £150,000 to send the 1,350-tonne machine for scrap.

James Stockan, the council leader, said at the time of the purchase the device was “symbolic of the industry” and that if it was junked “the critics would have said, ‘you should have kept that for something’”.

Last month Gareth Waterson, the council’s director of enterprise, said it had spent £45,000 maintaining the machine. “It has been a bit of an albatross,” he admitted.

It is currently moored of Lyness wharf in Hoy, in the Orkney Islands, and the council has a deadline of August 18 for its removal.

John Ross Scott, a Kirkwall East councillor, has called for the wave energy converter to be preserved for future generations and sent to a museum.

He told BBC Radio Orkney that destroying the device would be like scrapping the Wright brothers’ plane, the first manned aircraft to make a sustained flight in 1903.

Scott said the option of displaying the machine in a museum in England or Scotland had not been properly explored. “We just don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think it’s been assessed if any museums would be interested in it.”

He added: “I think you could perhaps take the nose-piece of the Pelamis, and make it an impressive piece that people would be stunned by.”

A council spokesman said: “Options were considered for potential uses for the Pelamis device and ultimately a decision was taken by the development and infrastructure committee — then ratified at full council — to arrange for the disposal or sale of the device for scrap, or any other purpose.”