The Chronicle Herald has an article on a small-ish tidal power project in Nova Scotia - Fundy Tidal, Ontario firm join for energy project.

A Digby County tidal energy developer is teaming up with an Ontario company to make a 1.95-megawatt tidal project — and possibly more tidal projects — a reality. ... The company’s other COMFIT approvals include 500 kilowatt projects in Grand Passage, between Brier Island and Long Island, and in Petit Passage, between Long Island and Digby Neck. They have two more in Cape Breton, a 500 kilowatt project in Great Bras d’Or Channel and one for 100 kilowatts in Barra Strait.

Canada's CBC also has an article on tidal power testing programs in the Bay of Fundy - Bay of Fundy FORCE study looking at tidal power turbine potential.

Understanding the environmental conditions and strength of the current in the Bay of Fundy is important for four consortia — European companies partnered with local Nova Scotia companies — who have committed to spend $9 million on four berths to test their turbines at the demonstration site.

In 2009, OpenHydro of France tried unsuccessfully to deploy a 10-tonne turbine in the Bay of Fundy, but the ultra-strong tidal flows destroyed the machinery within three weeks. Current speeds have been clocked between 10 and 12 knots.

Instead of waiting months for collected data to be retrieved and processed, the new testing platform is connected to an onshore computer at FORCE in Parrsboro via a three-kilometre-long fibre-optic cable that transmits data in real-time.

The Globe and Mail has an article on the slow progress towards exploiting tidal power in Canada's Bay of Fundy - Nova Scotia bets on economic lift from rising tidal technology.

Nova Scotia, with its record-setting tides, could be a world leader in tidal technology. But work is progressing at a snail’s pace in the province, while more investment is under way on the other side of the ocean, in Scotland and France.

The epicentre of Nova Scotia’s attempts to stay in the tidal game is a stretch of ocean floor near the town of Parrsboro. Here, in the Minas Basin – a huge inlet of the Bay of Fundy – the Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy (FORCE) hopes to become a key centre of tidal power research.

FORCE, which is funded by Ottawa, Nova Scotia, Encana Corp. and several tidal technology companies, was established as a place to test in-stream turbines in one of the most powerful tidal currents in the world. Three of the four offshore “berths” are rented, but none of the organizations that have reserved them – French power conglomerate Alstom SA, British-based Atlantis Resources Corp, and local outfit Minas Basin Pulp and Power Co. – have yet to put a turbine in place.

FORCE communications manager Matt Lumley says the strength of the tidal current at the site makes it attractive to companies designing turbine technology, but that is also slowing down their arrival, as they want to make sure their devices are strong enough to survive. “We are sitting on the top of Everest” when it comes to tidal power, he said. “Everyone wants to come here, but everyone is also a bit nervous.”

An early attempt to test a turbine in this spot did not turn out well. In 2009, Nova Scotia Power and a partner, Irish company OpenHydro, deployed a $10-million prototype turbine, but the tidal current ripped the blades off the device. Mr. Lumley insists the test was not a failure, as it successfully demonstrated the incredible power of the tides. It will likely be 2015 before anyone tries again, and by that time underwater power cables will be in place, allowing the test turbines to connect to the power grid.

This part of the Bay of Fundy could eventually support support hundreds of turbines and easily generate 2,500 MW of electricity, enough to power a million homes, says Richard Karsten, a mathematics professor at Acadia University in Wolfville, N.S.

IEE Spectrum reports that a tidal power project has gone live in the US - First Tidal Power in U.S. Starts Flowing to the Grid.

An offshore turbine is finally spinning in the United States! It's not the kind you're imagining, but this is a milestone nonetheless: The Ocean Renewable Power Company announced that its TidGen tidal turbines have started providing power to a utility grid owned by Bangor Hydro Electric Company. This marks the first time that any offshore power generation facility has fed electricity back to a utility grid in the United States.

ORPC completed installation of one of its tidal power devices earlier this summer in Cobscook Bay, part of the bigger Bay of Fundy, off the Maine coast. The TidGen has a peak power output of 180 kilowatts, enough to power around 25 to 30 homes. The company plans on installing another two turbines in the same location in the fall of 2013, possibly scaling up after that to 5 megawatts of power. That would be enough to power around 1200 homes.

The TidGen device, installed in water depths of 15 to 30 meters, takes advantage of water flowing in and out of the bay as the tides change. The Bay of Fundy as a whole is an enormous tidal power resource; ORPC says that 100 billion tons of water flow in and out of the bay every day, with tidal ranges as high as 15 meters. And tidal power has one advantage over, say, offshore wind energy, in that it is remarkably consistent and predictable. Ocean technologies in general are on the rise of late, such as the progress toward wave power in Oregon. Combined, wave and tidal power have fairly massive potential, up to as much as 15 percent of the U.S. electricity demand according to reports from the Department of Energy. Last year, a Georgia Tech group created a tidal power mapping tool that was validated by the DOE to aid in specific site development and localized resource assessment.

The Portland Press Herald has an article on the first commercial tidal power generation in North America, in the Bay Of Fundy - Maine company leading way as tidal energy comes of age.

The tide is running out of Passamaquoddy and Cobscook bays, transforming the miles-wide ocean passages around Eastport into fast-running rivers.

To the east of this easternmost American port, the Western Hemisphere's largest whirlpool is surging to life, creating a vortex capable of sucking a small skiff into the abyss. Here on the west side of town, the sea is fleeing Cobscook and, unwittingly, generating electricity for the Ocean Renewable Power Co.

Slung beneath a specially built barge moored near the bay's mouth, a sailboat-sized turbine spins in the 4-knot current, generating a clean, renewable and predictable flow of electricity. It's a 50-kilowatt prototype that ORPC is developing for use in rivers, a small cousin to the 60-kilowatt device it tested here last year.

On Tuesday, however, the company will unveil its first full-scale commercial unit at a ceremony here: a cylindrical module as big as a Grand Banks fishing schooner with long curved turbine foils. Sometime next month, it will carefully attach the module to a mount already awaiting it on the Cobscook sea floor a mile farther up the bay from here. The company will attach cables linking it to new transmission lines on the Lubec shore and, with the push of a button, the 180-kilowatt turbine will begin selling power to the grid, the first of a new class of damless tidal energy devices to do so anywhere in North America.

Tidal power, long in development, is finally coming of age, with a Maine company leading the way.

"What ORPC is doing in Cobscook Bay is really a very important milestone," said Paul Jacobson, an ocean energy expert at the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Electrical Power Research Institute. "With this project, these tidal power devices have finally crossed the threshold into commercial development."

There's much more to come. ORPC plans to add two more turbines to its Cobscook site in the coming year, and as many as 18 in the faster, harsher waters of Passamaquoddy Bay on the other side of Eastport by 2016.

"Maine is where it all started and where the lessons are being learned," said ORPC's president and co-founder, Chris Sauer, who calls Eastport the "Kitty Hawk" of his nascent industry. "Maine will become the intellectual center for tidal energy, with the people and knowledge base for how to do this."

The Eastport area has Maine's highest tides -- 20 feet -- because it is perched at the mouth of the vast Bay of Fundy, home to the greatest tides on the planet. It's the ultimate tidal resource, and ORPC and its foreign rivals are competing to harness its energy.

The Montreal Gazette reports three test tidal power projects are due to go live in the Bay of Fundy next year - Bay of Fundy tidal power to be tested.

Ocean energy is the next big thing, says Jean-François Ally, a senior project manager with Alstom Hydro of France. And generating electricity from the famous Bay of Fundy tides will only be the start, he said.

Alstom, besides being the world's second-biggest trainmaker after Bombardier Inc., holds third place in power generating equipment. It has a turbine plant at Sorel-Tracy, near Montreal.

Ally, speaking at an energy conference in Halifax, said his company has partnered with Vancouver's Clean Current Power Systems to deploy one of three test tidal turbine-generators in the Bay of Fundy in 2012. Lockheed Martin and Irving Shipbuilding are also partners in the test program.

The Maritimes have dreamt of harnessing the Bay of Fundy and its 55-foot tides for 50 years or more. Nova Scotia installed a Swiss-designed tidal pilot plant at the head of Fundy about 30 years ago but a full-scale development never overcame technical and financial obstacles.

GreenTech Media reports that a damaged rotor has forced tidal power company OpenHydro to "pull up from the Bay of Fundy" - A Big Setback for Tidal Power.

The prospect of nearly unlimited, renewable energy from the tides suffered a blow this month when OpenHydro announced it would pull its experimental underwater turbine from the Bay of Fundy.

The test in this most extreme tidal environment was seen as a critical opportunity for the industry to prove that harnessing the tides had finally become feasible.

OpenHydro lowered its 400-tonne, six-story turbine onto the seabed last November, choosing the swift flowing Minas Passage near Parrsboro, Nova Scotia.

Last week, the Irish company said it would yank the turbine out by October after an underwater video discovered two broken blades. The blades are made of a combination of plastic and glass.

The setback underscores how difficult it is to operate in the corrosive, storm-plagued marine environment. The $10 million, 1 MW project had hoped to show a first-of-its-kind tidal plant could be built to supply as much as 25 percent of Nova Scotia electricity.

The Bay of Fundy was selected because it arguably has the highest tides in the world, competing for the honor with the Ungava Bay in Quebec and the Severn estuary in the United Kingdom. Tides can rise 55 feet or more, generating a potential of 1,013 MW of power, 152 MW of which can be harnessed with little environmental impact.

The Globe and Mail has a report on some tentative first steps towards building large scale tidal power projects in Canada's Bay of Fundy - Monster turbines gear up to harness Fundy tidal power.

A full-scale tidal energy project, if viable, would involve hundreds of turbines and could produce about 100 megawatts from the bay's huge tides. That would be 10 per cent of the province's energy needs, but such a system is years away.
The demonstration phase of the project, involving three turbines, is expected to cost $60-million to $70-million. Each of the three companies involved - which will co-operate on environmental monitoring and onshore development - intends to test a different type of turbine. ...

The model chosen by Nova Scotia Power is similar. About six storeys high, with a turbine 10 metres across, it will use gravity to stay still underwater. This design is expected to be in place first, with the turbine going into the water late next month. It will not initially feed power into the grid.

Cleantechnica has a report on a Marine Current Turbines tidal power project in the Bay of Fundy - Giant Tidal Power Turbines Coming to a Canada Near You

One of the world’s leading developers of tidal power will partner with a Canadian utility to develop tidal power technology and associated facilities in Canada’s Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia.

Working in partnership with the Canadian company Minas Basin Pulp and Power, UK tidal power developers, Marine Current Turbines will demonstrate and deploy a 1.5MW tidal generator that will be connected to the Nova Scotia power grid.

Scott Travers, of Minas Basin Pulp and Power praised the move as an economic boon. “There is a potential new industry here employing hundreds of people in operations and manufacturing and deployment of tidal power technology, here and globally,” said Travers in a statement.

The SeaGen turbines to be installed use similar principles found in wind generator technology. The tidal turbines generate power from sea currents using a pair of axial flow turbines that drive generators through gearboxes. However, the high density of seawater compared to wind allows a much smaller system. The bay of fundycapture of kinetic energy from a water current, much like with wind energy or solar energy, depends on how many square meters of flow cross-section can be addressed by the system.

The Amherst Citizen has an article on a planned new tidal power development in the Bay Of Fundy - Tidal turbines expected to be in by fall ‘09. The comment about trying to stop the drift of young people from the area to work in the tar sand pits of Canada is an interesting one.

This area’s most promising energy resource - the tide - could help keep another of the area’s most precious resources - its youth - according to representatives of Minas Basin Pulp and Power.

John Woods, vice-president of the company’s energy department, was one of several representatives speaking to a packed house at the Parrsboro legion on Thursday night, July 24, during an information session to update those interested in the development of an in stream tidal power test site nearby.

“This is the reason why young people won’t have to leave here anymore for the tar sands in Alberta,” Woods told the crowd of about 125 people.

The company is still working on its environmental impact assessment before selecting the exact locations for the turbine, although consultant and marine geologist Gordon Fader confirmed that the sites will be in the Minas Channel, most likely in the area between Cape Sharp and Black Rock.

The company is also waiting on some equipment, mainly transmission cable to bring the power to land, but hopes to have the turbines in the water by fall of 2009, according to Woods. He said they are dealing with two different suppliers.

“We don’t know yet where the site is, and without that we don’t know how much cable we need,” he explained. “Without that we can’t even get the company to talk to us because they are so busy. Until we know what we want they won’t talk to us, but we think we’re going to have that answer in the next six weeks.”

The presentation included detailed graphic images of the ocean floor in the Minas Basin, explaining why the site selection process needs to be painstaking and cautious, due to factors such as geology, topography and currents.

Oceanographer Simon Melrose spoke of the only other test site of its kind in Europe, which he said has already created spin-offs in the local community, as young people have gained employment through studying and designing the technology.

While stopping short of confirming that it would be located in Parrsboro, they said that a tidal power site here would likely come with an educational interpretive centre that would be of great tourism benefit for the area. Woods likened it to the wind generating facility in North Cape, P.E.I., which he said draws 30-40,000 visitors every year.

“The facility could be either right on the shore, or it could be in Halifax,” said Woods. “We think it should go right on the shore. We’re now starting to look at landfall, and our view is to have it on the water’s edge, so, when people come, it’s all right there.”

Fader described the Bay of Fundy as the “mother lode of tidal energy in the world,” and said the energy collected in their test turbine to be installed will run ashore to the substation in Parrsboro.

Having studied the Bay of Fundy for the past 30 years, Fader spoke with excitement about how far they have come, and where the future lies. “Now we have the knowledge and information that will allow us to understand exactly what is going on there with geology, currents, and biology, so we can make the right decisions,” he said. “We still have a lot more to do, but this is a glimpse at where we sit in the geological world.”

Several questions from the crowd were answered, including whether or not the bottom conditions will remain the same for where the turbines will be located, the noise and vibrations that could be created by the turbines, and the effects ice in the winter might have on them.

All factors are being studied carefully but are not expected to become major problems, the audience was told. “This facility will be the best in the world,” he said. “Hold on, because ocean energy is a large resource, larger than wind, and you’re sitting on the largest resource in the world. There is a lot of potential here, and I can’t overestimate it.”