http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=20f0b6a5-4 f7e-462a-bc91-73fa2d3b2fe7 Tide is turning for Fundy power New technology may realize dream. Old-style dam systems could be rendered passe by devices like upside-down windmills CHRIS MORRIS CP, Monday, June 27, 2005 The search for alternatives to fossil fuels has brought the decades-old dream of power from the sea back to the surface. The generation of electricity from ocean tides is an energy option enjoying renewed interest across North America and Europe, thanks to rising fuel costs and new technologies. The new developments are especially timely for New Brunswick, which has committed to ensuring that 33 per cent of the province's energy mix comes from green sources by 2016. New Brunswick also happens to have at its doorstep the Bay of Fundy, with tides among the highest, most powerful in the world. Seven North American jurisdictions are taking part in a landmark study on tidal power by the Electric Power Research Institute, an independent, non-profit centre based in California. Its feasibility study, involving the governments of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Maine, Massachusetts, Alaska, Washington and California, should be complete by March 2006, says the institute's director, Roger Bedard. Harnessing the power of the tides has been the subject of experiments, small projects and big dreams for years. Before he was assassinated in 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy unveiled a major U.S. and Canadian tidal power project for Passamaquoddy Bay, between New Brunswick and Maine. The idea died with Kennedy. The only current tidal power project in Canada is a single, 20-megawatt turbine that has been operating for the past 21 years at the edge of the Bay of Fundy, near Annapolis Royal, N.S. "It has been a stellar performer," says Margaret Murphy of Nova Scotia Power. "It could just keep going and going for decades." But Murphy says Nova Scotia would never build another tidal project like that one, which was set into a pre-existing causeway. "The difficulty with these types of tidal power stations is they use what is called a barrage, or a dam, where you have to wall up large amounts of water," he says. Environmental concerns would make it impossible to build such a dam today, she says. But Bedard says a second wave of tidal technology is poised to revolutionize ocean energy. He says new tidal turbines are already being tested in pilot projects off England, Italy and on a small scale in the United States. They are like land-based windmills turned upside down. "These are kinetic energy devices that you submerge into the tidal stream," Bedard says. "The movement of the water turns a turbine, which turns a generator to make electricity - much like wind systems do with air as the medium. "But we're using water as the medium and since water is 1,000 times more dense than air, the power density of a moving water stream is much greater than a moving air stream." -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.323 / Virus Database: 267.8.2/29 - Release Date: 6/27/2005
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