Firm proclaims world first as tidal power project passes milestone

The emerging tidal power sector seems to have taken one other step forward — an Edinburgh-headquartered firm said Monday that its project had achieved a world first by producing 50 gigawatt hours of electricity.

“Throughout the early hours of this morning … our tidal stream array off the coast of the Pentland Firth became the primary tidal stream array on the earth to generate 50GWh of electricity,” Graham Reid, the CEO of SAE Renewables, said in an announcement.

Reid described the news as a “significant milestone in delivering tidal stream power at scale.”

“Total global generation from all other tidal devices and sites is lower than 50% of that quantity,” he added.

Situated in waters north of mainland Scotland, SAE Renewables’ MeyGen array is made up of 4 1.5 megawatt turbines and has a complete capability of 6 MW when fully operational. Currently, three turbines are in operation.

“The MeyGen site has been operational since 2017, we have now overcome many challenges, with reliability being a problem within the early days, but we have now learned an immense amount along the best way,” Reid said.

Scotland has an extended association with North Sea oil and gas production, but lately it’s turn into a hub for firms and projects focused on tidal power and marine energy on the whole.

These businesses include Nova Innovation, which has developed the 600 kilowatt Shetland Tidal Array, and Orbital Marine Power, which is working on what it says is the “strongest tidal turbine on the earth.”

North of the Scottish mainland, the archipelago of Orkney is home to the European Marine Energy Centre, where wave and tidal energy developers can test and assess their technology within the open sea.