Tidal power - The wave of the future
Paul Luke
The Province
24-Jul-2005
Three small B.C. companies are turning the tide on the world's future energy supply.
The trio has plunged into the endless moondance of tidal currents that number among B.C.'s most abundant and -- until now -- overlooked natural resources.
Clean Current Power Systems, Blue Energy Canada and Canoe Pass have turned to underwater windmills in their individual bids to harness the potential power that flows along the world's coasts.
Early next year, Vancouver-based Clean Current will fire up a $4-million tidal-power project at Race Rocks, an eco-reserve 10 nautical miles southwest of Victoria.
Formally, if vertiginously, dubbed the "Pearson College-EnCana-Clean Current Tidal Power Demonstration Project at Race Rocks," the project will extract tidal energy and turn it into electricity.
The star of the small-scale show is Clean Current's tidal turbine generator, a piece of cutting-edge technology that looks like a windmill in a tube as its ducted blades spin some 20 metres beneath the waves.
The electricity it generates will be carried by cable to replace the diesel-generated power that has been providing the juice for Pearson College's marine education centre on Race Rocks.
Clean Current wants to field test the 65 kW-generator in the harsh marine environment and prove the technology is viable.
The company will then sell the heck out of it, president Glen Darou says.
"The world is ready for this technology. It needs it," says Darou, an ex-oilman and former chief financial officer of Shell Canada.
"We'd like to have every major generator manufacturer license the technology from us and market it out into the world."
A full-scale commercial version of the generator might cost less than $1 million to build, Darou estimates. An underwater tidal turbine farm would likely need at least 200 units to achieve economies of scale, but the units could be added one at a time, Darou says.
Clean Current's not the only one betting on the tidal turbine generator's potential. EnCana Corp., the Calgary-based energy giant, has invested $3 million from its environmental innovation fund in privately held Clean Current to get the project going.
Clean Current's technical partners include AMEC, Powertech Labs and Triton Consultants.
Whereas Clean Current uses a horizontal axis underwater windmill, Vancouver-based Blue Energy Canada uses a vertical axis. Blue Energy has been advancing its tidal- current technology in B.C. since 1990, when its predecessor moved here from Nova Scotia.
The private company has also proposed a demonstration-educational project at Stanley Park.
"Tidal energy is a rising star in the field of renewable energy worldwide," spokesman Michael Maser said. "B.C. is ideally situated to not only generate its own renewable energy that could . . . be available for export, but it could also become the seat of the emerging tidal energy industry, as Denmark has captured the wind industry."
Canoe Pass has an ambitious agenda to develop tidal-current energy projects in Canoe Pass, which runs between Quadra and Maude islands near the company's home base of Campbell River.
It has inked a memorandum of understanding for a feasibility study with Calgary-based New Energy Corp. Canoe Pass hopes to see one or two of New Energy's vertical-axis turbines installed in the pass from which it takes its name.
"We plan to complete the feasibility study in this calendar year, launch a 250-to-500 kW demonstration phase in 2006 and begin full-scale commercial development beginning in 2007," Canoe Pass spokesman Chris Knight said.
The "ocean power" category, which includes tidal-current energy, could become the world's fastest growing source of renewable energy in 15 years, says Chris Campbell, Nanaimo-based executive director of the recently formed Ocean Renewable Energy Group.
"Our forecasts are that ocean energy will be at or below wind- power costs when it matures," Campbell says.
Mary Hemmingsen, director of power planning and portfolio management with B.C. Hydro, says tidal- current energy shows lots of promise but remains costly and has yet to be commercially proven as a reliable source.
The utility is considering whether to issue a tender call for a near-commercial project in the interest of nurturing tidal energy as a potential power source, Hemmingsen says.
"There are a lot of attractive conventional sources. At some point, we're probably going to chew through those and look a few years down the road to what is an environmentally benign, good source of power," she says.
"Tidal power may offer that."
TIDAL POWER IN INFANCY
- No commercial tidal-current installations -- as opposed to barrage-style systems such as one in Nova Scotia -- are operating in the world.
- "Tidal-current power development is estimated to be one to three years behind ocean wave and five to eight years behind wind power," Triton Consultants says in a study prepared for B.C. Hydro.
- B.C. is said to have world-class potential, with high-velocity tidal- current flows in the passages between the Strait of Georgia and Johnstone Strait.
- Triton estimates B.C. has about 55 potential sites suitable for tidal- current extraction.
- Based on realistic assumptions for near-future technology, B.C.'s tidal-current resources could account for 40 per cent of Hydro's current annual power generation, Triton says.