The Tide Is Turning  

Greentech Media thinks the tide could be turning for ocean power after a number of recent announcements, including that of a wave power plant off the WA coast.

U.K.-based Marine Current Turbines on Wednesday announced the installation of what it claims is the world's largest tidal turbine. The 1.2-megawatt turbine will be tested for 12 weeks before feeding power into the Northern Ireland grid, the company said.

The news comes just two days after Ocean Power Technologies said it had signed an agreement to team up with Griffin Energy to develop a wave-power system off the coast of Western Australia, Thomson Financial reported. And it comes the same week Hydro Tasmania and Biopower Systems announced they would install two 250-kilowatt water-energy prototypes in Australia - one wave-power system off King Island and one tidal-power system off Flinders Island, according to The Age.

After the testing period, Marine Current expects its system to operate for up to 20 hours per day, producing enough electricity to power 1,000 average homes. If everything goes as planned, that capacity will make this project the largest tidal-stream project in the world, the company said, four times larger than the company's previous Seaflow system, installed in England's Devon County in 2003.