Between Japan’s Goto Islands, the sea is doing something that is usually associated with wind farms and solar fields. Beneath the surface of the Naru Strait, a 1.1 MW turbine is drawing energy from water moving with the tides and sending electricity back towards land through a subsea cable. No blades are turning in the sky and no panels spread across the shoreline. The machine works largely out of sight, following currents whose timing can be forecast well in advance. Installed by Proteus Marine Renewables, the AR1100 grew from an earlier 500 kW trial in the same waters. Its deployment has given Japan a megawatt-scale tidal system designed to work with the regular rise and fall of the sea rather than depending on sunshine or changing winds.
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