Marine Current Turbines Ltd, the global leader in tidal stream technology, has successfully completed the installation of its 1.2 megawatt (MW) 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 positioned on April 3 there was a six-week operation to secure the 1000 ton structure to the seabed and link up SeaGen’s grid connection to the electricity sub-station on the southern shore of Strangford Lough. The completion of the installation was reached with the placing of the superstructure on top of SeaGen last week. When fully operational the tidal system’s 16-meter diameter, twin rotors will operate for up to 18-20 hours per day.

“MCT’s engineering team is to be congratulated for the excellent progress it has made over the past few weeks in very challenging conditions and we now move to the commissioning phase and commercial operation,” said Martin Wright, Managing Director of Marine Current Turbines.