Not sure how feasible it is to roll this out large scale. There aren't that many stretches of water as lively as the pentland firth.

One of the more badass sources of power. You've got uranium from supernovas, some form of captured solar energy, tapping the heat from the planet's core, or, in this case, directly slowing down the very rotation of the earth while pushing the moon away.

Tides go in, tides go out, never a miscommunication.

I wonder what the EROEI over projected lifetime is. Hopefully, comparable to generic hydro.

the Swedish company SKF announced that its bearings and seals on one of the turbines had passed the 6 1/2-year mark without needing unplanned or disruptive maintenance.

I've read many optimistic articles detailing tidal energy projects, however they seldom address the inherent upkeep costs for equipment and infrastructure.

I'm glad maintenance is mentioned here, but I worry that it glosses over that only one out of the four turbines passed the six year mark without needing disruptive repair. How disruptive was the other turbine maintenance? Does it push it beyond viable profitability?

I genuinely do hope for the technology to mature and introduce more clean energy alternatives.

... there are still large hurdles to overcome before tidal energy can be adopted more widely, such as dealing with regulatory issues, potential environmental effects and conflicts with other ocean users.

I was wondering about that. What happens to the weather, animal habitats, and everything if you slow tides and currents with a larger number of these things? Still gotta be better than burning fossil fuels.

It’s very hard to take what is essentially a wind turbine normally found on land and put it under water, said Fraser Johnson, operations and maintenance manager at MeyGen. The record-setting turbine should keep going for at least another year before it needs to come out of the water for maintenance, he added.

With a sample size of ONE (okay, maybe four) that projection seems optimistic, but I'm hoping he's correct.

It looks like this project is one of those that take into account marine life and try to have minimal impact on it.

For more on this, see section Key Environmental Issues:

MeyGen Tidal Energy Project