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Winning the tidal race: the world''s first offshore tidal current turbine, rated at 300 kW, has been successfully installed off the Devon coast, UK.

Article Excerpt
The first commercial scale prototype of a new kind of marine source generator has been installed by UK company Marine Current Turbines and is generating power to a resistive load.

Costing 3.5 million [pounds sterling], the project exploits a renewables resource that harnesses undersea tidal currents, a distant relation of the better known surface tidal power barrages and oscillating turbines but still in its infancy. Development is estimated to be one to three years behind ocean wave technology and five to eight years behind wind power, and in most cases has not advanced much beyond tidal modelling and miniature prototypes sited in rivers and lakes. Nevertheless there are two fairly well advanced projects, at Hammerfest in Norway ("the world's northernmost town") and the one described here, at Lynmouth in southern England. Dubbed 'Seaflow' it was designed by IT Power of the UK, built by its spin-off Marine Current Turbines Ltd and part-funded by the EU's Joule Programme and the UK's Dept of Trade and Industry. The balance of finance has come from a consortium of UK and German companies including Corus, Bendalls Engineering and Jahnel Kestermann.

The British system is not designed for the deepest tidal races but for installation in shallower waters where access for maintenance can be gained more easily. In fact the top of the structure projects above the surface, providing a platform to which the turbines can be raised for servicing. MCT Ltd has decided that this is a sounder system than that adopted by Norwegian developers Hammerfest Strom whose turbines are destined for deeper waters and will have to be...