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Scotland set to harness the sea with prototype wave energy machine.

Edinburgh-based Aquamarine Power worked with 27 different businesses in Orkney and Caithness, Scotland , through the complex process of installing its prototype Oyster wave machine device on the sea bed in Atlantic waters near Stromness, the first in the world.

Oyster is designed to capture energy from passing waves and to use this to send water under high pressure to an on-shore hydro-electric turbine. The installation, once fully completed, is to begin trials at EMEC, the European Marine Energy Centre, which offers the world's first grid-connected test facilities for both wave and tidal technologies.

The device is expected to generate its first electricity for the grid later this year. The Scottish government has big plans to become the renewable energy centre of the world, and this new technology puts it well on the way to reaching that target. Encouraging wave and tidal energy production in the Pentland Firth and Orkney waters has attracted 42 applications from 20 bidders keen to take up sea bed leases from The Crown Estate.

Orkney-based consultancy Aqutera has predicted that commercial scale wave and tidal energy projects in the Pentland Firth and Orkney waters could create up to 1,500 jobs, surpassing what the oil industry once supported in the area.

The machine was manufactured locally by Isleburn at Nigg yard, down the road from Caithness, reducing transportation, and  impact on the environment.

Scotland's plans to become the renewable energy centre for the world are moving at a rapid pace, as it emerged that the country is now negotiating with Middle Eastern investors to develop an offshore wind generating facility, with capacity almost equal to the total electricity-generating capacity of the UK.

Scotland's lead will perhaps have a major impact on the re-thinking of policy makers in Westminster, in the light of recent media coverage of Professor David MacKay of Cambridge predicting that the UK will suffer blackouts by 2016 unless large swathes of the countryside are "industrialised" for new sources of energy. It may not be necessary to use valuable land after all, with Britain's unique position as an island offering such vast possibilities for power production.