The Belfast Telegraph reports that output from the Strangford Loch tidal power station is exceeding expectations - Strangford wave turbine exceeding expectations (note to the editors - its not wave power).

The marine turbine installed at the mouth of Strangford Lough last year is generating more power than expected, such is the force of the current.

SeaGen is now running fully automatically, producing enough power to meet the average electricity needs for 1,500 UK homes, according to Marine Current Turbines, the company that developed the turbine.

The company has now been granted permission to operate the turbine without any environmental scientists on board to watch for marine mammals. The turbine can now be operated by remote control as experience to date suggests seals and porpoises are not at any significant risk, Marine Current Turbines said.

Peter Fraenkel, technical director and co-founder of the company, told the Lisbon International Ocean Power Conference that SeaGen is running reliably and delivering more energy than originally expected in an extremely aggressive environment.

"It should be remembered it is being driven by a wall of water 27m deep, similar to the height of the Tower of London, that surges back and forth with every tide through the Strangford Narrows in Northern Ireland at speeds of up to 10 miles per hour," he said.

"We are getting more energy than expected mainly because the resource is more energetic than originally predicted during earlier surveys."

The Energy Collective has an update on the tidal power project at Strangford Loch in Northern Ireland - Tidal Power - Turbines Even a Kennedy Could Love (see an animation here).

A narrow channel in Northern Ireland with notoriously strong marine currents is just a little closer to producing electricity with the world's first commercial-scale tidal power turbines. As was reported a couple weeks back by Maria Surma Manka at CleanTechnica, the massive structure, known as SeaGen, began its journey to the turbulent waters at the mouth of Strangford Lough. And as of 4AM local time on April 2, 2008, Marine Current Turbines safely lowered the 1000 ton structure onto the seabed between Strangford and Portaferry. The 1.2 megawatt tidal power turbine array is four times the size of any tidal power generator currently in operation. When fully operational later in the summer, its 16m diameter, twin rotors will operate for up to 18-20 hours per day to produce enough electricity to power about 1100 homes.

The installation of the turbines is proving to be tricky. "I can promise you it's a pretty challenging environment, for the mariners and all the rest of it," said MCT's Martin Wright in an article at Cleantech.com. "And it's actually happening in the narrows, which is the entrance between the Irish Sea and the vast body of the Strangford Lough itself." Wright added, "It's a neck where you get these highly accelerated flows, and it's a heck of tide that runs through here. And that's what we're seeking to harvest." ...

If all goes well, the company will then work on the next development, a "tidal farm" of seven SeaGen devices, together capable of generating 10.5MW, which it hopes will start operating by 2012.