Nova Scotia tidal turbine installed

A Canadian tidal power developer has installed a turbine at a test site in the Bay of Fundy. Cape Sharp Tidal's project off Nova Scotia could demonstrate the feasibility of larger-scale marine hydrokinetic power plants connected to the mainland electricity grid.

Cape Sharp Tidal is a joint venture between Canadian utility Emera Inc. and marine turbine manufacturer OpenHydro.  Its project entails a grid-connected 4-megawatt array consisting of two tidal turbines.  The project is located at the Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy (FORCE) site.  Headquartered near Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, FORCE is Canada's leading research center for in-stream tidal energy, with demonstration berths, a grid interconnection capable of accepting tidal power, and environmental monitoring capabilities.

This week Cape Sharp Tidal deployed the project's first turbine-generator, a 2-megawatt OpenHydro unit.  In subsequent work, crews interconnected the turbine cable tail to the FORCE site's main interconnection cable, an existing 16MW subsea export cable connected to an onshore substation.

Previous efforts to develop hydrokinetic tidal energy projects in the Bay of Fundy have met with difficulty.  While the bay offers large and powerful tides, weather and sea conditions can prove challenging, as can obtaining environmental and regulatory approvals.  A test tidal turbine deployed in 2009 was quickly destroyed; the turbine installed this week was originally slated for installation earlier but was delayed due to concerns over impacts to fisheries and the environment.  This week's installation represents a concrete step forward for Canadian tidal power.

Cape Sharp Tidal intends to install and connect a second turbine at the FORCE site in 2017.  According to the developer, its future plans -- subject to regulatory and business approvals -- could include a commercial-scale project of up to 300 megawatts capacity within 15 years.

Tide Mill Institute 2015 conference

The Tide Mill Institute will hold its 11th annual conference on November 6-7, 2015, at the Cummings Center in Beverly, Massachusetts.  Participants will explore the past, present, and future uses of tidal energy through expert presentations, exhibits, and a field trip to a mid-seventeenth century tide mill site.

Part of the tidal barrage at the site of Heal's Lower Mill, Westport Island, Maine.

A nonprofit corporation, the Tide Mill Institute hopes to advance the appreciation of tide mill history and technology by encouraging research, by promoting appropriate re-uses of former tide mill sites and by fostering communication among tide mill enthusiasts.  The Institute's mission is:

• to advance appreciation of the American and international heritage of tide mill technology;
• to encourage research into the location and history of tide mill sites;
• to serve as a repository for tide mill data for students, scholars, engineers and the general public and to support and expand the community of these tide mill stakeholders; and
• to promote appropriate re-uses of old tide-mill sites and the development of the use of tides as an energy source.

Tide Mill Institute's 2015 symposium includes presentations on tide mills and tidal power by experts from France, Ireland, and the U.S.  Thomas McErlean will describe his experiences uncovering a nearly 1,400 year old tide mill at Nendrum, Northern Ireland, whose bed logs were cut in 619 AD.  The conference includes a low-tide field trip to view the site of the Friend's Mill, built about 1647-1649 on the Bass River in Beverly, Massachusetts, where a later foundation and some remains are still visible.  Concurrently, the Beverly Historical Society is opening its new exhibit on the Friend's Mill this weekend.

For more information or to register, contact Bud Warren at 207-373-1209 or email info@tidemillinstitute.org.

Funding to reduce barriers to marine, hydrokinetic energy

The U.S. Department of Energy has announced a competitive funding opportunity designed to support the growing marine hydrokinetic energy industry.  $1.9 million is available for projects that will improve the collection and analysis of environmental monitoring and experimental data from marine hydrokinetic devices. 

Looking east from Griffith Head, Reid State Park, Maine.  Damariscove Island, a proposed offshore wind site, sits on the right horizon.

Marine hydrokinetic energy technologies capture the energy embodied in moving ocean water such as tides, currents, and waves.  While the marine hydrokinetic industry is relatively young, at least one project has been licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and built off the Maine coast.  Research and development efforts are ongoing regarding a variety of marine hydrokinetic technologies and devices, and their environmental impacts continue to be studied.

The recently-announced federal funding aims to support that environmental evaluation.  Working with the National Oceanographic Partnership Program, the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Wind and Water Power Technologies Office has issued a Funding Opportunity Announcement entitled “Marine and Hydrokinetic (MHK) Environmental Effects Assessment and Monitoring.”

Under that Funding Opportunity Announcement, the Department of Energy offers $1.9 million in funding to be split by up to 11 recipients.  Specific project areas include studies of fish behavior and mortality around hydrokinetic turbines, improved environmental monitoring of marine hydrokinetic projects, and predictive modeling of marine hydrokinetic projects' environmental impacts based on surrogate technologies with stressors and receptors similar to those expected from marine hydrokinetic technologies.

Under the competitive solicitation, the Department of Energy requested Letters of Intent to be submitted by 11:59 Eastern Time on April 18, 2013. Full applications, which must include specified documents, must be submitted by 5:00 PM ET on May 16, 2013.  For more information, visit the Department of Energy's official Funding Opportunity Announcement website or contact Todd Griset at Preti Flaherty.

Maine may streamline tidal power permitting

The Maine legislature is considering a proposal to streamline the permitting process for some tidal energy projects. The bill, "An Act To Streamline the General Permit Process for Tidal Power", would relieve a perceived conflict between state and federal law over the permitting process.

Tidal energy has been harvested along the Maine coast for hundreds of years. While tide mills' heyday predated modern regulation of energy projects and their environmental impacts, anyone developing a modern tidal power project must navigate multiple layers of rules and requirements. The recent resurgence of interest in tidal energy has led to an often overlapping patchwork of regulations.

These rules can be hard to interpret, and occasionally lead to chicken-or-the-egg conundrums. For example, a 2009 Maine law created an expedited general permit process for certain small tidal power projects. Under that process, projects capable of generating up to 5 megawatts of power can qualify for an easier permitting path if their primary purpose is demonstrating or testing tidal technology. (By way of comparison, 5 megawatts is roughly equivalent to 6,705 horsepower - imagine what a tide miller could have done with that!)

Prior to filing a permit application with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection under the 2009 law, an applicant must first obtain a finding from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that the project will have no significant adverse impact on environmental quality. Unfortunately, before issuing that finding federal regulators want applicants to show that they are already seeking state approval. This regulatory conflict makes it hard for people who want to develop or redevelop a tidal resource to move forward.

To fix this problem, the DEP, Senator Mike Thibodeau of Waldo County, and Representative Joyce Maker of Calais proposed an amendment to Maine law. Their bill, known as LD 437, would enable the DEP to start processing an application without needing to wait for the federal environmental assessment. After a public hearing earlier this month, the legislature's Joint Standing Committee on Environment and Natural Resources voted to recommend that the bill ought to pass as amended.

Next steps for the tidal streamlining bill include consideration by the full Senate and House. Given the committee's vote, the bill seems likely to find further support in the two chambers. While its enactment may not launch a tide of new tidal power developments in Maine, relieving this piece of the regulatory tangle should help people test and demonstrate tidal power technologies old and new.

June 7, 2010 - historic tidal energy: tide mills and

I've been looking into the history of tidal power and coastal use policy. The Winnegance story is illustrative of the kind of resources and opportunities that exist along the coast of Maine and many other states, as well as the kinds of conflicts that arise through development of these resources.

One classic conflict is between energy development and environmental protection. For dam proposals, whether tidal or in rivers, one of the common considerations is the impact on fish. Recently, this came up in the Fort Halifax dam case, where a lack of agreement over fish passage resulted in 2008 in the depowering and removal of the 1908 dam.

Fish protection came up with the dams and mills at Winnegance as early as 1892. In that year, the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine considered the case Oliver v. Bailey. On February 24, 1892, game wardens on patrol came across a bass net that had been strung across Winnegance Creek by John Oliver, whose property abutted the stream. This was prohibited by a special act passed in 1885, which regulated the level of water behind the dam as well as the catching of bass in Winnegance Creek.

The Court's opinion notes the the local history and alterations to land use based on commercial needs:

prior to 1837 Winnegance creek was an Inlet of the Kennebec river; that in that year, under the charter granted in 1835, the dam was erected across said creek, and northeast of the public highway, extending from the Bath to the Phippsburg shore; that sawmills on the dam were erected, and gates constructed, for the purpose of sawing lumber; and that the dam so erected, and the mills so constructed, thereon, had for their purpose the utilization of water to be held In the creek above said dam by the operation of said gates.

The Court's opinion provides an interesting look into how the tide mills played a major role in shaping the local landscape:

It was also agreed that since said date, at different times, as business might warrant, the several mills upon said dam have been in operation; that the owners of said mills each have above the same, and between the dam and the highway, booming privileges. In which to place their logs, and that the same were set off and allotted to the several owners of the mills on said dam, wherein each might place and hold his logs for use; that the flood gates in said dam are 18 feet wide, would admit scows, lighters, and rowboats, and that such had at times passed through said gates, and under said highway; that, at a certain time of tide, mastless scows, skiffs, and boats can pass under said highway, provided the owners of the booming privileges leave an opening so to do; and that there has been place left by the owners of said booming privileges for craft, of the kind and type designated, to pass up said creek.

The court again addressed the impacts of the tide mill development on navigation and commerce:

It was also agreed that the bridge connecting the city of Bath and the town of Phippsburg has been maintained by both for many years; that said bridge is built, legally, of cobwork spiling, and across the channel are stringers, affording a space under said bridge from 30 to 40 feet long, that gundolos may pass through up and down; that some 40 years ago a schooner was built and launched In the creek, and taken out to the Kennebec river, by removing a portion of the dam sufficient to give passage to said schooner from the creek Into the river; that the lighters mentioned, carrying boards and wood of some kind, have occasionally passed through the gates, and under the bridge; and that the millowners, when the tide had reached its flood, have all the gates so constructed that, at the beginning of slack water, they close, and the water is held for the purpose of running the mills constructed on said dam.

Oliver argued that the regulations were "intended only for the protection of salt-water fish, or fish that migrate between salt and fresh water". Oliver argued that the 1835 legislative dam authorization and 1837 dam construction, use of the upstream pond for booming logs, and limited navigation through the dam, "separated Wlnnegance creek above the dam from the general body of the tidal waters of the state, and taken it out of the above-cited statutes for the protection of migratory fish."

The Supreme Judicial Court disagreed, stating, "The statutory protection of these fish is as important now as before the erection of the dam." Oliver lost his case, and presumably his net.

In Oliver's case, the court wrestled with the question of whether the tidal power development had so fundamentally changed the landscape as to take Winnegance Creek from tidal to non-tidal status. The court concluded that, in light of environmental considerations, it had not. There may have been other more subtle issues in play in the 1892 case, but it provides an interesting window into the past history of tidal energy development in Maine.

I'm curious how this issue would be addressed today. What are the inshore effects of tidal barrage and related power technologies? Today these issues might not come up in the context of game wardens, but the descriptions of the tide mills' impacts of navigation, commerce, and fisheries all have relevance to modern tidal power development.

Soon to come: more Winnegance history, and a look at how things were for the much larger Passamaquoddy Power Project in the 1930s.

June 4, 2010 - tidal power in Maine, a history, part 1

Humans have harnessed the mechanical energy of tidal fluctuations for a long time -- at least as far back as the Romans in 600 A.D., and possibly as early as 200 A.D. The exact mechanisms vary, but the basic idea is to convert the potential energy of water that has been lifted by a high tide as it falls to a lower elevation. Typical sites are on tidal estuaries or rivers: sheltered from the effects of open ocean waves, but salty enough to have a significant tide.

Tide mills were common in Maine, especially just downriver from my house in Bath. At Winnegance, on the Bath-Phippsburg line, a bend in the Kennebec River with a natural cove made for optimal conditions for tidal power.

The History of Phipsburg, Maine, from George Varney's 1886 A Gazetteer of the State of Maine, describes some of the local resources:

At the north looms Parker’s Head, and at its south-western side is the inlet basin forming the tide-power known as Parker’s Head Mill Pond. Next succeed the harbor at Phipsburg Center, with Drummore Bay two miles above, with inlet and tide-power. Through Fiddler’s Reach, a curve of the Kennebec around the northern end of Phipsburg, we pass to Winnegance Creek, nearly three miles in length, and a basin at its extremity, forming two unsurpassed tide-powers, and separating Phipsburg from Bath and from West Bath except for a neck 200 rods in width, the Winnegance Carrying Place.

The History gives more detail on the Winnegance mills:

On the Winnegance Tide-Power, three miles from Bath post-office, and four miles from Phipsburg Center Village, have been sixteen mills, nine on the Bath side and seven on the Phipsburg side of the line. Some of these, however, were burned several years since. There are now ten sawmills and one grist-mill operating in the town.

So why Winnegance? The site was right, in that the coves and tide range were ideal. Furthermore, the site was near the mouth of the Kennebec River, where millions of logs floated downriver every spring and summer for processing into lumber, and loading onto schooners to send the boards to markets around the world. Many of the older houses in the Winnegance and Bath area, ours included, bear the marks of the kind of up-and-down tide-powered saws that operated there.

I'm curious to learn more about why tide mills largely vanished. (At Winnegance, the Morse & Sons Lumber mill still operates where the Morses have run it since 1801, but it no longer apparently harnesses the tides.) An interesting piece in Discover Maine Magazine points to the inconvenience of the timing of tidal power. If you are limited to tapping the ebb flow, the time of the peak drop will move -- at Winnegance, each high tide is 12 hours, 22 minutes later than the previous -- so some days, your power resource will only really be operative at night. I'm not sure this was enough to eliminate most of the tidal power development in Maine, but it was a start.

I'm also going to look at more ambitious historic tidal power plans like the Passamaquoddy Power Project.