SeaGen tidal turbine now up and running

Greenbang has some good news for you. No, that whole Boris Johnson thing wasn’t actually a big joke and Constable Beadle isn’t about to divest himself of a fake beard and confess to pranking the capital any time soon. The news isn’t that good.

The news is, rather, this good: remember SeaGen? The soon-to-be erected first commercial scale tidal turbine from Marine Current Turbines that Greenbang mentioned a few months back?

Well, it’s no longer the soon-to-be erected, it’s the really-actually-is erected turbine. Yes, indeed, the 1.2 MW SeaGen system is now officially up and running. It’s now got a 12 week testing period after which, if all goes well, it will start chucking power back into the grid.

Here’s how it all went down, according to Marine Current Turbines:

Marine Current Turbines Ltd, the global leader in tidal stream technology, has successfully completed the installation of its 1.2MW SeaGen tidal energy system in Strangford Narrows in Northern Ireland. There will now be a 12-week period of commissioning and testing before it starts regularly feeding power into the Northern Ireland grid.

After being carefully positioned by the heavy-lift crane-barge “Rambiz” in the early hours of 3 April there has been a six-week operation to secure the 1000 tonne structure to the seabed and link up SeaGen’s grid connection to the electricity sub-station on the southern shore of Strangford Lough. […]

When fully operational the tidal system’s 16m diameter, twin rotors will operate for up to 18-20 hours per day to produce enough clean, green electricity, equivalent to that used by a 1000 homes. This is four times greater than any other tidal stream project so far completed, including MCT’s earlier 300kW Seaflow system installed off Lynmouth in Devon in 2003.