Energy shortage and environment pollutes aggravate ceaselessly all over the world. As a green clean pollution-free renewable energy, tidal current energy has characteristics such as large reserves, wide distribution, predictability, little environmental pollution, etc. Development and utilization of tidal energy has important practical significance to ease the energy shortage and reduce the pollution of the environment. The main form to utilize tidal energy is to generate power, this paper studies the vertical axis turbine-type tidal current energy power generation device, describes the present development situation of the power generation device which could be divided into three kinds, namely the floating structures, the seabed piled structures and the sit seabed structures, analyzes the characteristic of different structural forms of the power generation device, pointed out the development trend and key technology of the power generation device. This paper will provide reference for theory study and engineering application of the vertical axis turbine-type tidal current energy power generation device.