Tag Archives: FORCE
Nova Scotia calls tender for Fundy tidal power site
The energy is there and so is the wire. All you need to do is catch it and put it in the wire and the province will guarantee you a subsidized rate for 15 years. But there’s two big caveats on the offer. First you have clean up the mess left by the last company that tried. The province is requiring any responders to a call for tenders to take over Berth D at the Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy pony up a $4.5 million security for the removal of the 1,300-tonne turbine abandoned at the site. Another caveat is that you have to figure out how to get the energy out of the water hauled through the Minas Passage by the tide. So far no one has been successful. And finally you need to find someone to lend you money to build this machine. >click to read< 09:52
EDITORIAL: Tidal turbines’ troubled waters
For decades, politicians and provincial boosters have been touting the potential of Nova Scotia’s tidal power. We’re steeped in tide lore around here, from the Shubenacadie River’s tidal bore to those time-lapse videos of dockside fishing boats being floated off the bottom by the incoming tide. There’s enormous power in the Bay of Fundy, if only some clever engineer could channel it somehow into our energy grid. It’s clean, it’s renewable and it’s free. Well, it’s proving more complicated, expensive and difficult to harness that energy than even the most skeptical observer could have imagined. And an accident involving a fishing boat is just more bad news for efforts to use the tides to wean ourselves from coal-burning electricity generation. >click to read<13:15
Ownerless Bay of Fundy turbine operating without fish kill monitoring gear
Even before Cape Sharp Tidal, owned by Irish company OpenHydro and Emera, placed it on the floor of the Minas Passage two weeks ago and OpenHydro was placed in receivership days later, the 10-billion tonnes of seawater hauled into the narrowing between Cape Split and Cape Chignecto was already tainted by bad blood. “The opposition isn’t about just whether it kills fish because other things kill fish too — fishermen kill fish,” said Mary McPhee, former facilities operator for the Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy, the government-funded tidal test site commonly known as FORCE. “What fishermen want is for the tidal power people to be treated in the same manner as they are. They want the law to be applied equally. So if a fishery has a quota, why can’t tidal power have a quota?” >click to read<08:47
“That turbine was put down there in bad faith.” – Cape Sharp Tidal owner files for bankruptcy in Ireland
A week after a massive tidal turbine was placed in the Minas Passage, its owners have filed for bankruptcy. Local contractors, marine service companies, motels, fishermen and other business people are owed an undetermined amount of money. OpenHydro owns 97 per cent of Cape Sharp Tidal, with the remaining three percent owned by Emera, Nova Scotia Power’s parent company.,, Fishermen claim they were told the turbine would not be installed at the Force site in the Minas Passage until the close of the lobster season at the end of July. “They used all these local resources, hired all these local business people, drove right over all that local lobster gear and they never intended to pay nobody,” said Darren Porter, spokesman for the Fundy United Federation, a fishermen’s organization. One contractor, who didn’t want his named used, estimated that OneHydro owes “tens of millions of dollars” to local companies. >click to read<22:11
Court challenge of test turbine could cost fishermen’s association
Fishermen who took the government to court may have to pay for it. Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy wants their legal costs to be paid by the Bay of Fundy Inshore Fishermen’s Association after a judge dismissed a judicial review the company was involved in. The review was requested after environment minister Margaret Miller’s decision last June to greenlight Cape Sharp’s turbine deployment in the Bay of Fundy. So far FORCE is the only respondent to follow Justice Robertson’s invitation to file for costs, made when she was making her ruling in early April after a full-day hearing in February. “We’ve been advised that Cape Sharp is not seeking its costs,” said the fishermen’s association’s lawyer, David Coles, in an interview Wednesday. But the provincial government is still unsure of what its position will be, he said. Click here to read the story 20:33
Fishermen skeptical of third environmental monitoring device in the Minas Passage
A third environmental monitoring platform is being tested in the Minas Passage by the Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy, or FORCE, but a fishermen’s group maintains the sophisticated equipment being deployed still cannot determine mortality, the ultimate environmental test on marine life in the Bay of Fundy. FAST-3 is a third monitoring platform featuring additional sensors to collect data on fish presence and behaviour that was deployed on Feb 2. Several marine industrial companies around the province contributed to its construction and deployment. The platform isn’t on the actual turbine site but in a 10-metre shallower area adjacent to the Crown-lease area that the Province of Nova Scotia has designated for testing up to five different turbine technologies in the near future. Dr. Haley Viehman, a post-doctoral fellow at Acadia University, will be analyzing the data upon its retrieval within a month. Viehman comes to the province from the University of Maine, where she studied fish interactions for five years using hydro-acoustics to observe fish movements prior, during and after a tidal turbine was deployed in 2012 for a year as a test in Cobscook Bay, Maine. Continue reading the story here 12:31
Protesters hope to change course of tidal project
Energy Minister Michel Samson, Emera representatives and members of FORCE weren’t the only ones to go to Parrsboro on Tuesday to witness flicking the switch to turn on an in-stream tidal power turbine. A group of 20 people, including fisherman, Mi’kmaw, scientists and community members protested on the West Bay Road on the way to the FORCE site. They blocked one side of the road with a tree so everyone attending the event would have to drive it and see them. Local RCMP were called but didn’t disband the group or ask them to leave. “We were peaceful but wanted to put our point across that we still do not consent to this,” said weir fisherman Gerry Taylor. Taylor fishes out of Parrsboro and his weir is closest to the FORCE site. He has a wife, four children and staff who rely on him. He’s also the president of the Fundy United Federation, representing fishers and driftnetters in the Minas Passage and Minas Basin. Read the story here 11:04
New turbines just as lethal as Annapolis turbines
Much more needs to be said and written about the testing of tidal stream turbines in Minas Passage. Graham Daborn, emeritus professor at Acadia University, wrote an Opinions article under this heading (Oct. 15), but without the “more”. Unfortunately much of what has been said and written comes from the proponents of tidal power. And they have obscured the facts about what the physical properties of their machines can do to living organisms. People living around Minas Basin still talk about what happened when the first turbine was installed at the FORCE (Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy) experimental site in 2009. Two humpback whales suddenly showed up on Minas Basin beaches with large gashes in their bodies. That turbine suddenly stopped working and when it was lifted in 2010 blades were broken. What broke them? Annapolis was installed as a test turbine and 31 years later it is still spinning, still killing fish (five sturgeon and counting this year). There never was an environmental assessment. Read the op-ed here 09:43
OPINION: Tidal power from Fundy — Separating fact from fiction, Graham Daborn Emeritus Professor at Acadia University
There have been a number of statements in the media over the last few months about the testing of in Minas Passage. Regrettably, inaccurate and exaggerated claims have led to a good deal of public apprehension and confusion. It only takes a few seconds to make an inaccurate or ridiculous statement. Explaining why a statement is untrue or ridiculous, unfortunately, takes rather more time or space. The following addresses a few of these issues. Claim 1: That the turbines to be installed at FORCE will “chop whales into sushi for seabirds to eat.” In response to a question during a CBC interview (on The Current, June 15), a spokesperson for the Bay of Fundy Inshore Fisherman’s Association said: “This is not a suggestion; it is a fact.”,,, The only way to determine that is to install a turbine with monitoring equipment in place to establish the animals’ responses. At present, there is absolutely no evidence that mammals would be at risk of death or injury from the turbines to be tested in Minas Passage, although they may end up having to forage elsewhere. Read the op-ed here, and keep up the fight! 10:55
Gaspereau River fishermen worried the fish may not make it up the river if turbines are in the water
Some fishermen along the Gaspereau River are concerned how tidal turbines could affect a local fishery. There are 14 active square net licences in the Gaspereau and Melanson area issued by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Those fishermen catch Gaspereau, a species of herring, when they swim up the river from the Bay of Fundy in April and May. On Monday night at the Gaspereau Community Hall, people in the area had their chance to speak to FORCE (Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy), the organization behind the tidal turbine project. “We want to have some meaningful dialogue with Cape Sharp and FORCE about this project they’re undertaking,” said Chris Gertridge, with the Gaspereau Fishermen’s Association. “We have a lot of questions as to why we’re never consulted.” Read the rest here 14:24
The first of two towering tidal power turbines to enter Bay of Fundy next month
The first of two towering turbines designed by Cape Sharp Tidal to harness the immense power of the Bay of Fundy will be installed next month off the coast of Nova Scotia, an company official announced Thursday. Sarah Dawson, the community relations manager for the project, said one of the five-storey high, two-megawatt turbines built in Pictou by Aecon Atlantic Industrial Inc., will be loaded on a barge during the first week of June and travel around the province until it reaches the test site near Parrsboro. That trip will take a couple of weeks. The new turbines are a bigger and more robust version of a turbine tested by OpenHydro and Nova Scotia Power in 2009 that was heavily damaged by the Bay of Fundy’s powerful currents. Read the rest here 18:04
