Posted Jun 12, 2014, 6:31 PM
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: lodged against an abutment
Posts: 7,556
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Quote:
Next-gen renewable energy: Harnessing the Bay of Fundy’s tides with underwater windmills
Special to Financial Post | June 12, 2014 | Last Updated: Jun 12 9:26 AM ET
For anyone hoping to harness tidal energy, the most powerful force to be reckoned with is the tidal surge in the Bay of Fundy. The Bay’s Minas Passage in Nova Scotia is the focal point for the Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy (FORCE), an organization that has drawn together a consortium of technology developers, researchers, utility suppliers and government in an effort to harness clean, renewable in-stream tidal energy.
“We get a lot of jokes around ‘May the force be with you’,” laughs Matthew Lumley, communications director for FORCE.
While other projects are taking place in various corners of the world, the Bay of Fundy is unique in terms of the volume of water and the speed it moves, he explains. “It’s known to have the highest tides in the world. But what’s more important from an energy generation standpoint is water velocity, which has a direct impact on extractable power.”
When water reaches the shallower regions of the Minas Passage, velocity peaks at five metres per second. Total extractable power at that speed is calculated to be 7,000 megawatts. “Modelling suggests 2,500 megawatts are safely extractable without creating drag on the tides,” Lumley says. “That’s an enormous amount of power.”
A key component that shows great promise for optimizing this renewable resource is a technology known as tidal in-stream energy conservation (TISEC). “In other words, it’s a windmill that harnesses kinetic energy through the passive flow of water through blades, making it a benign solution,” Lumley explains. “In the last 15 years, there have been 150 different designs in varying stages of development.”
The first turbine went into the water in 2009, he says. “The fact we could deploy a turbine where we wanted and align it with the tidal flow to recover power was a huge step. The problem was the current was two-and-a-half times more powerful than we modelled for. But we learned a lot.”
Mark Baker, sales and business development manager, marine renewables for GE Power Conversion in Rugby, England, says it’s not unusual for tidal developers to build smaller-scale models to put through an exhaustive series of model tests before scaling them up to full size. “The industry is now moving positively forward, with full-scale testing of these devices and planned tidal arrays up to 10MW. For the most part, we’re talking to tidal developers that are very advanced with their designs.”
The present emphasis is on connecting multiple turbines into tidal arrays. “The challenge for developers is once the devices generate electricity, how do they get that onto the grid? You have to take that AC voltage and condition it using variable-speed drives and inverter boxes that enable safe and grid-compliant connection.”
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http://business.financialpost.com/20...ter-windmills/
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