The completion of the installation was achieved with the placing of the superstructure on top of SeaGen and the departure of the 'Missing Link' support vessel,which slipped its moorings and headed back out to the Irish Sea.

Martin Wright, managing director of Marine Current Turbines said, 'This has been a ground breaking operation, the like of which has never been attempted before and it has attracted interest from around the world.

SeaGen’s installation has been filmed by TV crews from North America, Germany and France as well as from Ireland and the UK. MCT’s engineering team is to be congratulated for the excellent progress it has made over the past few weeks in very challenging conditions and we now move to the commissioning phase and commercial operation.'

When fully operational the tidal system’s 16m diameter, twin rotors will operate for up to 20 hours per day to produce clean, green electricity, equivalent to that used by a 1,000 homes. This is four times greater than any other tidal stream project so far completed, including MCT’s earlier 300kW

SeaFlow system installed off Lynmouth in Devon in 2003. ESB Independent Energy, the retail subsidiary of Ireland’s ESB, has signed a Power Purchase Agreement to supply to its customers across the island of Ireland with the electricity produced by the SeaGen system. An official ‘switch-on’ ceremony is scheduled for late summer.

In February MCT announced a joint initiative with npower renewables to take forward a 10.5MW project using several SeaGen devices off the coast of Anglesey, North Wales. It is hoped the tidal farm will be commissioned around 2011/2012.