Tidal Power

Now there is a date for the beginning of the Marine Current Turbines 1.2MW generator at Strangford Lough, the week of August 20th. This is from a single unit making it as powerful as the largest wind turbines, but unlike a wind turbine it is reliable you always know exactly how much energy you will be getting at any time years in advance. It is the reliability that really makes tidal power important since it makes it is suitable for feeding into the base load of the electricity grid, unlike practically every other renewable energy source (except nuclear). They have high hopes for the technology with a company spokesman saying:

"We will build on the success of SeaGen to develop a commercial tidal farm, of up to 10MW in UK waters, within the next three years. With the right funding and regulatory framework, we believe we can realistically achieve up to 500MW of tidal capacity by 2015 based on this new SeaGen technology."