Qualla: SeaGen https://qualla.com/seagen en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:16 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: SeaGen https://qualla.com/seagen SeaGen: Introduction https://qualla.com/seagen/ In April 2008, a crane lowered a strange-looking machine into Strangford Narrows. It looked a bit like an upside-down wind turbine, with two underwater rotors mounted on a yellow steel column. Three months later, on a summer day in July, that machine - SeaGen - began feeding electricity into Northern Ireland's grid. For the next eleven years, it would run between 18 and 20 hours a day, every day the moon kept moving, generating 1.2 megawatts whenever the tide ripped past. By the time the last bolts were unfastened in 2019, it had exported 11.6 gigawatt-hours of electricity and answered an enormous question: could you generate commercial power from tides without killing the creatures that lived in them?

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]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/s/j/seagen-wp/gcsj-seagen-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full SeaGen: The Long Road from Loch Linnhe https://qualla.com/seagen/ The story did not start in Strangford. In 1994, a small UK engineering company called Marine Current Turbines demonstrated a 15-kilowatt prototype tidal generator in Loch Linnhe, on the west coast of Scotland. Nine years later, in May 2003, they scaled up to a 300-kilowatt machin...

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]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/s/j/seagen-wp/gcsj-seagen-the-long-road-from-loch-linnhe.mp3 0:06 2 full SeaGen: Two Rotors, One Software Error https://qualla.com/seagen/ SeaGen's design was elegantly straightforward. Two 16-metre axial-flow rotors, each sweeping 200 square metres, sat at the ends of a horizontal crossbeam mounted to a vertical pile driven into the seabed. Each rotor drove a generator through a three-stage gearbox - two planetary ...

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]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/s/j/seagen-wp/gcsj-seagen-two-rotors-one-software-error.mp3 0:06 3 full SeaGen: Watching the Seals https://qualla.com/seagen/ From the beginning, SeaGen was treated as much as a science experiment as a power station. Its operating licence required a five-year environmental monitoring programme, and Queen's University Belfast led the research. The team watched the lough's resident seals, harbour porpoise...

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]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/s/j/seagen-wp/gcsj-seagen-watching-the-seals.mp3 0:06 4 full SeaGen: Decommissioning as Achievement https://qualla.com/seagen/ Marine Current Turbines was sold to Siemens in 2012, and Siemens in turn sold the company to Atlantis Resources (now SIMEC Atlantis Energy) in 2015. Plans existed for multi-rotor systems, including six-rotor configurations capable of generating eight megawatts at a single site. N...

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]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/s/j/seagen-wp/gcsj-seagen-decommissioning-as-achievement.mp3 0:06 5 full