Abstract: Tidal current energy is a type of renewable and sustainable marine energy. Despite the complexity in exploitation, considerable improvement has been achieved since the beginning of the current century. This paper discusses the hydrodynamics progress through the perspective of equipment design and industrial application of tidal current energy technology, including tidal resources estimation, kinetic energy conversion, converters, and tidal farm array arrangement and design, then summarizes representative hydrodynamics problems, their theoretical models and numerical methods. Technical characteristics of converters and supporting structures are also analyzed to highlight new problems and developing trends in the present stage, offering references for optimal design of tidal energy converters and power station projects.