Weekly Intelligence Brief

SeaGen is running at full power: MCT

16 November 2009

Marine Current Turbines (MCT) has shared that its tidal turbine, SeaGen, is running at full power and fully automatically exactly as planned.

SeaGen has already delivered over 350 MWh into the Northern Irish electricity grid.

Peter Fraenkel, technical director and co-founder of MCT, confirmed that SeaGen is running reliably and “delivering more energy than originally expected in an extremely aggressive environment”.

Such performance is being attributed to the resource being more energetic than originally predicted during earlier surveys. Fraenkel added that the turbine is being driven by a wall of water 27m deep, similar to the height of the Tower of London, that surges back and forth with every tide through the Strangford Narrows in Northern Ireland at speeds of up to 10 miles per hour.

The twin generators typically produce an average of 5MWh of electricity during the 6¼ hours of each ebb and each flood tide.

SeaGen is earning revenue from the sale of the power that is being generated and it also earns ROCs, the Renewable Obligation Certificates that are awarded for clean renewable generation.

“It is a hugely significant milestone for the company to be selling electricity consistently and earning revenue,” said MCT’s managing director Martin Wright.

The company claimed that its tidal stream device SeaGen is in line to produce 7000MWh of renewable energy per year - against original predictions of 5000MWh.

Read more:

Marine Current Turbines: http://social.tidaltoday.com/search/node/Marine+Current+Turbines

SeaGen: http://social.tidaltoday.com/search/node/SeaGen

Martin Wright: http://social.tidaltoday.com/search/node/Martin+Wright