What is believed to be the world�s first vessel built specially for deploying tidal turbines has been operating near Orkney.

What is believed to be the world's first vessel built specially for deploying tidal turbines has been operating near Orkney.

The £15m European Marine Energy Centre, which has centres at Stromness and Eday, played host to the OpenHydro Installer, owned by Irish company OpenHydro, at the weekend.

The unique vessel succesfully mounted a tidal turbine on the seabed off Eday. The news comes as the Crown Estate prepares to lease areas of the seabed for tidal projects in two months.

At a cost of £7m in public money, Emec has installed five subsea cables off Eday to which power generating equipment can be connected as renewable energy companies develop their prototypes. One of the first companies to use it was OpenHydro.

The twin-hulled barge was towed, complete with turbine, to the site at Eday.

Up to now, OpenHydro have been using a research platform to put prototype turbines through their paces at EMEC's tidal energy test site at the Fall of Warness, off Eday. Earlier this year, one of the OpenHydro's turbines fed electricity generated at sea into the National Grid, a key moment in the test programme and a first for the UK. Now the company's vision is to have these machines deployed in farms under the world's oceans. It has now developed a system for placing the turbines directly on to the seabed.

"When we realised the type of vessel we needed wasn't available in the marine market place, we decided to build our own," said OpenHydro chief executive James Ives.

The barge was built at a shipyard in Holland and is fitted with three powerful winches, which are used to lower turbines fitted with individual support rigs on to the seabed.

EMEC managing director Neil Kermode said: "This represents an important step forward on the journey towards harnessing the power of tidal currents as a significant and sustainable source of electricity."