SEAGEN, the world’s first commercial tidal current turbine in Northern Ireland’s Strangford Lough, is running with bearings from NKE Austria.

According to the SeaGen’s developer, Marine Current Turbines, tidal current turbines are installed under the ocean surface and are driven by the tidal flow of water.

These “underwater windmills” are among the latest developments in renewable energy.

According to NKE, it has supplied nine different types of bearings are used in the 1.2MW turbine’s gearbox. This includes deep groove ball bearings, tapered roller bearings, cylindrical roller bearings and four-point contact ball bearings with outer diameters from 300 to 1090mm.

The machine’s gearbox was designed by Orbital2, a leading UK developer of renewable energy gearboxes.

Marine Current Turbines says unlike wind energy, which is subject to the random nature of the weather, tidal flows are much more predictable. Moreover, due to the higher density of water compared to air, underwater turbines do not need to be as large as wind turbines.

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