Tidal power announcement on the way

[Praxius]

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2008/01/08/tidal-ns.html

The Nova Scotia government is expected to announce a multimillion-dollar investment in tidal power on Tuesday.

The successful companies bidding on projects will be announced at a news conference in Parrsboro.

"Tidal power has great potential," Premier Rodney MacDonald said Monday. "We could see upwards of 15 per cent of Nova Scotia's power generated through the highest tides in the world in the Bay of Fundy."

Though the premier said actual power generation is years away, he said Tuesday's announcement marks an important step toward significant tidal power in Nova Scotia.

When the province called for proposals last fall, two companies bid to build and run a test facility and a total of seven groups offered to test their turbines in the Bay of Fundy.

Well hopefully this will be one step away from oil. That is if it works and the costs balance out. With the combination of tidal with the wind turbines around the provience, it's a good start anyways.

 

[Tonington]

The Fundy Basin certainly could provide us with a glut of electricity. My only concern is that in the process they be mindful of migration routes for fish and other marine animals. The Inner Bay of Fundy Atlantic salmon are already on the edge. Without the breeding program at places like the DFO Coldbrook Biodiversity facility, many strains would be worse still.

 

[lone wolf]

I can see those turbine blades being a problem for marine life. Ton, do you suppose instinct will overcome caution?

Woof!

 

[Tonington]

I can see those turbine blades being a problem for marine life. Ton, do you suppose instinct will overcome caution?

Woof!

Well, I would expect that the people I worked with at the facility I mentioned would voice their concerns when the public consultations take place. As to your question, I'd like to say caution wins out. But that's presumptuous of me considering the historical aspects. Humans are an agent of change, but behaviour is not so readily changed

 

[Praxius]

Well the above picture I have posted isn't related directly to the news article, therefore the above may not be the final design of what will be used (Although most tidal generators are designed similar to the above)

I believe a few months ago when they were talking about this, they were commenting about the marine life migrations, the whales, fishing communities and where they fish, etc.... so although not much was explained above in this article, I've seen that they are aware of these concerns.

As it went for the blades causing injury or death to passing marine life, I believe on report said that the blade don't move fast enough to cause any major injury, AKA: they're not exactly like windmills.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power
^ Basic information on Tidal Generators

http://www.racerocks.com/racerock/e.../envimpactmonitor.htm#Anchor-References-12392

The matter of how these types of facilities would affect and be affected by fish and [FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]marine mammals is the overriding environmental issue to be resolved.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]As noted at the outset, there is also a dearth of actual experience based information on the subject. Examination of the most favourable sites, Table 1 and Table 2 indicate that two thirds are located in the area of Johnstone Strait/Discovery Channel. This is also a major migration route for salmon and is home to resident marine mammals notably killer whales.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]It is uncertain if salmon, which will generally seek out advantageous currents during their migration, would “see”, react and avoid large rotating turbine blades. There is not any particular elevation in the water column which the fish favour over others and which could be used to locate turbines to avoid collisions. The blades themselves rotate quite slowly relative to hydroelectric and wind turbines, namely a few revolutions per minute depending on current speed, blade curvature and size but always to maintain a blade tip speed of less than 7m/s (when cavitation is likely to occur).[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]Those configurations which either use a ducted turbine or a venturi and which could be fitted with a screen to keep fish from entering the machine would be advantageous. It may also be worth testing other, behavioural means of keeping fish and mammals away, e.g., tickle voltages, strobe lights.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]As noted this is a major issue for tidal current power facilities. It is doubtful that it can be fully resolved prior to installing a demonstration unit. However, such a demonstration unit would provide a much-needed opportunity to assess this technology and its environmental effects especially those related to fish and marine mammal impacts.[/FONT]

 

[karrie]

The Fundy Basin certainly could provide us with a glut of electricity. My only concern is that in the process they be mindful of migration routes for fish and other marine animals. The Inner Bay of Fundy Atlantic salmon are already on the edge. Without the breeding program at places like the DFO Coldbrook Biodiversity facility, many strains would be worse still.

I was under the impression that the safest thing for fish was wave generation versus tidal generation. Is there not enough wave activity or something? Is it not as safe as I was led to believe? Why are they going tidal instead?

 

[Tonington]

I was under the impression that the safest thing for fish was wave generation versus tidal generation. Is there not enough wave activity or something? Is it not as safe as I was led to believe? Why are they going tidal instead?

Highest tides in the world.;-)

Less wave action in the Bay of Fundy, as opposed to the exposed coastline of the Atlantic, which is battered by waves.

As Praxius pointed out, it's hard to predict how the salmon would respond to the turbines. I'm not sure how different the response would be for spawners compared to the smolts, or if it even would be different.

 

[dumpthemonarchy]

Always worrying about the little fishees, good I guess. A good Canadian response. But one could think if fish regulariy aboid sharks, whales and other predators, they will learn to avoid these turbines.

Very little praise for such a good announcement. Yeah, it was a little belated.
$100 oil tends to sharpen the senses. Spiked gas prices are soon to follow. Speculators are now betting on $200 oil.

 

[Praxius]

as like me not owning a cell phone, I'm also glad I don't have a car at the moment... Mooo hooo haw haw haw *cough cough... gag*

 

[eh huh]

Well hopefully this will be one step away from oil. That is if it works and the costs balance out. With the combination of tidal with the wind turbines around the provience, it's a good start anyways.

It really has nothing to do with oil except using more of it. A whopping %3 of our electricity is generated by oil and about %2 through so called renewable sources. It will take massive amounts of oil to manufacture and maintain these generators, better off just burning the oil in the generators we already have.

Liquid hydrocarbons cannot be replaced by electricity generation without rebuilding our entire infrastructure - it ain't gonna happen, especially in a world of depleting resources.

I bet you dollars to donuts this tidal power pipe dream never puts one watt of usable electricity back into the grid all the while sucking billions out. It's all called Jevons paradox.

Many people already think we would be better off using all of that natural gas being consumed in the tar sands to heat houses instead, hence the talk of just building a nuke reactor on site. That is all called energy returned on energy invested.

Another factoid that may open up your mind to the scale of the problem - we use 10 calories of hydrocarbon energy to create 1 calorie of food energy. We literally eat oil, now think about ethanol production using corn? Think depopulation

 

[Tonington]

NS already produces up to 20 Mw daily with the tidal power generator on the Annapolis river.

 

[Unforgiven]

Nature finds a way. If change is gradual there will be no reall issue for migrating species to figure it out and make an adjustment. The key is gradual change.

 

[Tonington]

You sound like Dr. Malcolm from Jurassic Park.

Unfortunately, there's no way to tell how spinning blades in the water will affect migration patterns of fish. The vibrations could ward them off, the smell of the them could ward them off, sure they might adjust, but we don't want Inner Bay of Fundy Salmon moving to a different river because of a manmade disturbance. That would be the same thing as that facility I mentioned just breeding random salmon from different rivers, and then you lose that genetic uniqueness that once belonged to a particular strain( ie. gold river or gaspareau).

 

[Praxius]

It really has nothing to do with oil except using more of it. A whopping %3 of our electricity is generated by oil and about %2 through so called renewable sources. It will take massive amounts of oil to manufacture and maintain these generators, better off just burning the oil in the generators we already have.

I was leaning more towards the long run where this will be a step towards the removal of the combustible engine and other machines which require oil as a fuel not as a lubricant. And it's also a step closer to more developments of technology so that the above will not require oil in the first place.

It's better then doing nothing.

Liquid hydrocarbons cannot be replaced by electricity generation without rebuilding our entire infrastructure - it ain't gonna happen, especially in a world of depleting resources.

Well welcome to the world of change and challenge. I never said it was going to be a picnic..... but once again, it's still better then doing nothing, and now finally after so many generations of us raping the planet for all it was worth and taking what we wanted, not what we needed, now we gotta tough it out a bit and make change the hard way.

They can be replaced by electrical generation, hybrid and 100% electrical cars are an example of this. Also the fact that you can easily modify a desil engine vehicle to use vedgitable oil for fuel rather then gas, this also proves there are numerous ways around what you think is impossible.

I bet you dollars to donuts this tidal power pipe dream never puts one watt of usable electricity back into the grid all the while sucking billions out. It's all called Jevons paradox.

Gee... considdering tests and prototypes have already been at work for a few years now, they have the charts and studies to prove they work to some degree... sure they're not going to be perfect starting off, but neither was the Model-T compared to todays vehicles. You gotta start somewhere and if you feel you can make a safe bet on the above, have fun.

Many people already think we would be better off using all of that natural gas being consumed in the tar sands to heat houses instead, hence the talk of just building a nuke reactor on site. That is all called energy returned on energy invested.

Another factoid that may open up your mind to the scale of the problem - we use 10 calories of hydrocarbon energy to create 1 calorie of food energy. We literally eat oil, now think about ethanol production using corn? Think depopulation

It's also called adapting and adjusting. I find it funny that people will think reserving a few farms for fuel will make us all starve... cripes, these farmers are having enough problems just trying to get people to buy their products for food, if they can also distribute some of their product towards fuel, then they now have a fighting chance at keeping their business. Oh and we all don't live off of corn... I don't know about you, but I also eat other foods.

So tell me... what is your great plan for solving our problems of today? Or do you feel there's nothing that requires solving to begin with?