River current turbine on the Nile in Sudan 1980

The tidal turbine concepts were initially developed by Peter Fraenkel whilst working at IT Power Ltd, an internationally recognised renewable energy consultancy company which he founded and where he served as Technical Director for 19 years. He was primarily responsible for water current technology, together with hydropower and wind, and is the principal inventor behind the fundamental patents and other intellectual property, which are now wholly owned by MCT.

As long ago as the 1970s, Peter was navigating up and down the Thames testing a current turbine he designed for the Intermediate Technology Development Group, a British charity. The turbine was eventually deployed on the Nile in Juba, southern Sudan, where it pumped water for irrigation. However after two years of reliable service, the growing civil war prevented Peter from keeping track of it.

Peter continued his work in fluid dynamics and power generators over the next ten years working on wind and small-scale hydroelectric power in the developing world until the 1990s, when Scottish Nuclear gave him funding to design and built the world’s first tidal turbine with rotor blades that cut a circle 3.5 metres in diameter, which throughout the summer of 1994 generated 15 kilowatts from the cold currents of Corran Narrows in Loch Linnhe on the west coast of Scotland.

Thanks to funding from a variety of EC and UK Government grants in the late 90s early 00’s, Peter and IT Power were able to set up MCT to scale up the technology, first to the SeaFlow project of Lynmouth in Devon, and now at last to commercial scale with the installation of SeaGen in Strangford Narrows, Northern Ireland.

In all, the initial body of work that now resides in the patents held by MCT represents over 15-man years of effort and provides the platform for the current development programme.