This image, from 2017, shows one of the tidal flow turbines of the MeyGen project. The MeyGen array has a total of four turbines.
Chris Ratcliffe Bloomberg Getty Images
The burgeoning tidal power sector appears to have hit the ground running again – an Edinburgh-headquartered company said on Monday that its project had achieved a world first by generating 50 gigawatt hours of electricity.
“During the early hours of this morning … our tidal array on the coast of the Pentland Firth became the world’s first tidal array to generate 50GWh of electricity,” Graham Reid, CEO of SAE Renewablessaid in a statement.
Reid described the news as “an important milestone in delivering tidal power at scale.”
“Total global generation from all other tidal devices and sites is less than 50% of that amount,” he said.
Located in the waters north of mainland Scotland, SAE Renewables’ MeyGen array is made up of four 1.5 megawatt turbines and has a total capacity of 6 MW when operational. Currently, three turbines are in use.
“The MeyGen site has been operational since 2017, we have overcome many challenges, with reliability being an issue in the beginning, but we have learned a huge amount,” said Reid.
Scotland has a long association with North Sea oil and gas production, but in recent years it has become a hub for companies and projects focused on tidal power and marine energy in general.
The businesses include Nova Innovation, which has developed the 600 kilowatt Shetland Tidal Array, and Orbital Marine Power, which is working on what it calls “the world’s most powerful tidal turbine.”
North of mainland Scotland, the Orkney islands are home to the European Marine Energy Centre, where wave and tidal energy developers can test and establish technologies in the open sea.
A relatively small footprint
Despite the excitement about the potential of marine energy, the footprint of tidal projects remains much smaller than other renewables.
However, some progress has been made in recent years. In data released in March 2022, trade association Ocean Energy Europe said that 2.2 MW of tidal capacity was installed in Europe in 2021, up from just 260 KW in 2020. Globally, 3.12 MW of tidal capacity was installed.
But by way of comparison, Europe will install 17.4 gigawatts of wind power capacity by 2021, according to figures from industry body WindEurope.