Nova Scotia Eyes Tidal Power in The Bay of Fundy
In case you weren’t aware, The Bay of Fundy has some of the largest tidal variations in the world. The amount of energy that passes through there is absolutely tremendous. Having seen the tidal bore–as standing wave of rising tide that is the only true “tidal wave”–first hand, well yeah, it’s freakin’ impressive. A turbine is being planned for testing in a couple years:
According to local legend in Atlantic Canada, a giant whale in ancient times made such a splash with his mighty tail that the water in the Bay of Fundy sloshes back and forth to this day.
Getting power from that giant splash could be only a couple of years away, as the Nova Scotia government appointed Offshore Energy Environmental Research group just completed a round of six community forums on tidal power in the bay.
Nova Scotia Power has already partnered with Ireland’s OpenHydro Group to provide in-stream underwater turbines and expects to have a 1 megawatt demonstration unit in the water in 2009. Source: Nova Scotia looks at tidal power | Inside Greentech
Honestly I hope this gets off the ground. It’s a simple thing that could help reduce the need for fossil-fuel powered generation and pressure to fire up more nuclear power plants.
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Back to considering the entire system costs for a project, one question which comes to mind is whether this will affect the source of the tides. The tides are caused by the Earth’s rotation in conjunction with the Sun and Moon. Thus, tides are caused by the energy stored in the rotational inertia of the Earth. Extracting this energy will affect the rotation of the Earth (as well as perhaps pushing the Moon into a higher orbit). So, the question is, how much rotational slowing of the Earth would such a tidal power project cause, and can we tolerate the slowing of the Earth’s rotation?
I suspect the answer is that it won’t make enough of a difference to notice, at least in our lifetimes. But, in 1000 years, will the length of a day approach 48 hours? Will the Moon be twice as far away? Someone should work the numbers.
Dave