Tidal power

[saveasteading]

 

This is copied from a Facebook page, but seems genuine to me.

 

That's a lot of power.

Last I knew this was to be a blade rising and falling but the photo shows a rotating system.. .  Aah the article has disappeared. 

 

Tidal power must stop at high and low tides, and isn't mentioned here,  but with absolute predictability.

 

"

 

 

Engineers at the University of Edinburgh, in partnership with tidal energy developer Orbital Marine Power, have deployed the O3 tidal turbine array in the Pentland Firth — a 3-kilometer-wide strait between Scotland and Orkney that channels the strongest accessible tidal currents in Europe — producing a combined output of 74 megawatts from 18 floating turbines, sufficient to power the entire city of Inverness (population 65,000) continuously and indefinitely from tidal energy alone. Inverness ran 100% on Scottish tide for 14 consecutive months, with zero fossil fuel backup required. A city powered by the moon's gravity. 🌊
The Orbital O3 platform is a floating tensioned mooring system that positions twin horizontal-axis turbines at optimal depth in the tidal stream, rotating bidirectionally as both the flood and ebb tide drive water through the Pentland narrows. The system's genius is its deployment method: the entire floating platform is towed to position and anchored with subsea cables, requiring no seabed construction and allowing retrieval for maintenance without heavy lift vessels. The turbines themselves are designed for blade replacement in under four hours, making maintenance economics comparable to onshore wind.
The Pentland Firth has been identified by the European Marine Energy Centre as containing enough tidal energy to supply 40% of Scotland's total electricity demand. With 24 identified high-energy tidal sites around the British Isles, the UK's total accessible tidal resource exceeds 30 gigawatts — roughly equivalent to the entire current installed nuclear capacity. Unlike all other renewables, tidal output is calculable to the minute for centuries ahead, making it the holy grail of grid planners: clean, predictable, and inexhaustible.
The UK government has committed £1.5 billion to tidal stream energy expansion through 2030. Edinburgh's team is now designing a 200MW expansion that would make Scotland a net electricity exporter to England and Europe.
Source: University of Edinburgh / Orbital Marine Power, Nature Energy 2025
#TidalEnergy #OrbitalMarine #ScotlandRenewables #PentlandFirth #OceanPower #CleanEnergyCity

[SteamyTea]

A couple of people I was at university with, and who I happened to lecture to as well, have both been invited with marine turbines.

It is an interesting area, but does seem to be getting reliable now.  It is better than wave energy that has a dreadful reliability problem.

 

[Gone West]

Wasn't the Strangford Lough turbine a rotating one?

[SteamyTea]

11 minutes ago, Gone West said:

Wasn't the Strangford Lough turbine a rotating one?

Yes, one of the first ones deployed.