After being positioned by the heavy-lift crane-barge in the early hours of 3 April there has been a six-week operation to secure the 1000 tonne structure to the seabed and link up SeaGen's grid connection to the electricity sub-station on the southern shore of Strangford Lough.

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

When fully operational the tidal system's 16m diameter, twin rotors will operate for up to 18-20 hours per day to produce enough clean, green electricity, equivalent to that used by a 1000 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.

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