Amid claims that it is the largest ocean turbine installation to date, U.K.-based Marine Current Turbines (MCT) has placed a 300-kilowatt (kW) turbine three kilometers off of the English coast.
Vertical Axis Turbine
With backing from stakeholders that include the U.K. and German governments, the European Commission’s Joule Program and a consortium of U.K. and German industrial companies, the so-called Seaflow project cost approximately U.S. $3.5 million. The project aims to test and perfect the turbine during the next three years, according to a June 30 article at SolarAccess.com.
The turbines consist of rotors mounted on steel piles and set into a socket in the seabed. Since ocean water is more than 800 times as dense than air, slow velocities in water will generate significantly more electricity than wind turbines. Ocean currents are also predictable, unlike wind power, notes SolarAccess.com.
