Earlier this week Atlantis Resources announced that it had placed a tidal stream turbine off the northern coastline of Scotland and generated power for the first time from the 1.5 MW installation. The company plans to install three more turbines next year and use that experience to build out the site to approximately 400MW capacity. (For comparison, a typical coal power plant in the US has 547MW capacity on average.)

Atlantis partnered with engineering firms to build and install four foundations on the seabed in October. The company spent much of the previous year laying undersea cables to connect the completed turbines to the onshore control center.

The firm that designed the turbines, Andritz Hydro Hammerfest (AHH), spent several days establishing communications with this first turbine and making sure all safety and management systems were operational after the installation. Now, Atlantis reports:

The AHH team has begun the process of powering up the turbine to tune the control system for optimized generation. During this program, the project is exporting electricity for the first time, using only the tidally driven water flows which rush through the Inner Sound of the Pentland Firth.

The full installation will be built with turbines from both AHH and in-house Atlantis turbines, which look similar. Atlantis describes the turbines as having "three blades, similar to wind turbines, a pitching system for these blades, and a yaw mechanism to turn the turbine through approximately 180⁰ when the tide changes direction."

The company goes on to say the nacelles of both turbines “contain a generator and gearbox, but the power conditioning equipment is housed in the onshore facilities.”

This first installation will generate 6MW of power. The next 6MW plan is due to begin construction next year and will benefit from a €17 million (approximately $18 million) grant provided by the European Commission’s NER 300 fund, which has been set up specifically to fund carbon capture and renewable energy projects.

The underwater site, which Atlantis calls “MeyGen,” sits “between the island of Stroma and the northeasterly tip of the Scottish mainland,” according to the company’s website. The area was leased to Atlantis in 2010 by The Crown Estate, and a renewed, 25-year lease was signed in 2014. The onshore site for the power conversion equipment and grid connections are leased from a private party.

In a company report on the MeyGen project, Atlantis said that it had “extensively tested” 1MW test turbines in ocean environments, as had AHH. “The increased capacity to 1.5 MW is not considered to pose any significant technical or engineering challenges,” the company said.

Underwater turbines have been an underdog renewable energy resource, particularly because installations can be expensive, especially when they’re using new technology, and finding the right location can be challenging. Installations generally need to be close to land to take advantage of heavy tides, but in a safe spot that won’t hurt the environment or people. But once the turbines are built, they tend to have a long life. The first tidal power station was built in 1966 in the estuary of the Rance River in Brittany, France, and it’s still operational.

Besides being renewable, tidal power is predictable in ways sun and wind power aren’t. In a statement, Atlantis CEO Tim Cornelius referenced the supermoon that appeared earlier this week, saying “those of us with clear skies were able to get a good view of the powerhouse behind tidal energy and be reminded that, even in times like these, there are still predictions we can rely on.”