Proponents of tidal power move forward off eastern Maine coast

Eastport was the site of a previous effort to harness the region’s powerful tides, back when Franklin Roosevelt was president and America was mired in the Depression. Down the block from Ocean Renewable Power’s office and across from the tall wooden pilings that expose the magnitude of Eastport’s tides, a museum on Water Street features a scale model of the last effort.

Bob Lewis helped to restore the model, which was built by the Army Corps of Engineers to pinpoint the location of the huge dams and impoundments that were part of Roosevelt’s Passamaquoddy Bay Tidal Power Project.

“It helps put what we’re doing in perspective,” said Lewis, a military retiree who now supervises Ocean Renewable Power’s onsite operations.

Systems under development today rely on tidal stream turbines that are powered by current flows, just as windmills are spun by moving air.

Known as tidal in-stream or hydrokinetics, the process is a far cry from old-style tidal barrages that are more akin to dams and cost much more to build. The best-known plant of that type, built on France’s Rance estuary, has been producing power for more than 40 years.

Ocean Renewable Power tested its prototype with different types of blades for much of the past winter in the frigid waters of Deep Cove. The tests were done aboard the barge Energy Tide 1, which is equipped with devices to measure turbine speed, tidal flow rate, voltage and electrical current. A bigger test came in April, when the barge was towed to the Western Passage between Eastport and Canada’s Deer Island, where it generated electricity for the first time.

While the output was modest, the purpose was to demonstrate the feasibility of the turbine generator unit; Ferland said it passed that test with flying colors.

The commercial model would be roughly three times the size of the prototype and be placed in the water for testing as early as next year. By 2011, if all goes well, output could expand to 5 megawatts. Ocean Renewable Power’s long-term goal is an array of turbines that would generate 80 to 120 megawatts.

Only a handful of sites in the Lower 48 lend themselves to utility scale tidal generation, according to Bedard, including Eastport and a few areas along Washington’s Puget Sound. Alaska, he said, has 95 percent of U.S. tidal resources venue in three ways: It can provide its technology to other permit holders, generate power at its own sites, and take on the role of project developer for others who enter the market.

Because the technology is still in its infancy, techniques for building and deploying turbines are still being shaped.

“What we’re doing is not in the shop manual,” Lewis said. “We’re writing the shop manual.”

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