SeaGen: Tidal Turbine To Go Online, Speak Gaelic

Darn. Too bad we don't have tides here in Northern America! Via Sky News:

Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland is to get the world's first turbine capable of generating commercial amounts of electricity from tidal energy. Bristol-based Marine Current Turbines (MCT) said that the installation will go ahead on Easter Monday, subject to favourable weather and further engineering work.

SeaGen is the biggest turbine of its kind in the world, with the capacity to produce 1.2MW of electricity - four times more than any other tidal turbine - and will generate clean and sustainable electricity for around 1,000 homes. The giant turbine is environmentally friendly - it makes no noise, is almost completely below the surface of the water, never runs out and has zero emissions. MCT has been given permission to install and operate SeaGen in the mouth of Strangford Lough - one of the fastest tidal flows in the world - for five years. The company says it believes it will be realistic to achieve up to 500MW of tidal capacity by 2015, based on the SeaGen technology.

Here's the web site for Marine Current Turbines, a more or less Scottish company. Nearer to the Hordes, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has frozen new applications in Washington State, and Tacoma Power appears to have been the first utility in the United States to file for a tidal energy project.