Hi Oliver,

Canada’s Bay of Fundy has the world’s highest tidal range and is the site of a demo project installed in 1984, a 16 mw straflo turbine.

The Canadian government and the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick provincial governments are working through how they will deal with permitting and supporting the various tidal technologies being proposed for the Bay of Fundy. They are holding a series of public meetings in Nova Scotia. Last week I attended one in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

Nova Scotia is conducting a Strategic Environmental Assessment. First, they commissioned EPRI (Electrical Power Research Institute, based in Palo Alto, California) to study the resource for in-stream tidal (Canadian term for “tidal stream”). Result: about 2200mw of which about 300 mw appeared to be practically achievable. The tidal lagoon resource is about 5000 MW exclusive of pumping.

Given that in-stream tidal has numerous devices in the experimental stage, they have bifurcated the permitting process into “Test Sites” (in-stream) and “Commercial Sites” (tidal lagoons). There are appropriate differences between the test-technologies (includes proving the technology, track record, etc.) and tidal lagoons (commercial technology: no need for technical learning curve) and the process for permitting they must undergo.

Barrages are not being considered at all. Canada did extensive studies done in the 1970’s including consideration of 63 different barrage configurations and the use of barrages was subsequently dropped from consideration. Following is their (the Strategic Environmental Assessment team) statement:

“In the past, tidal energy technology involved installing turbines in barrages across estuaries or bays. The Nova Scotia Power Annapolis Royale Tidal Power Generating Station, commissioned in 1984 is an example of this approach. However, this technology is now considered unsuitable for broad-scale commercial use because of environmental and economic concerns.” [They go on to describe the technologies under consideration, in-stream and …] ”Another tidal technology is the tidal lagoon, which creates an offshore enclosure, but unlike a conventional barrage does not totally block tidal flow.” (OEER, Fundy Tidal Energy, 2007)

This leaves the SDC (i.e. the UK) as the only entity worldwide giving serious consideration to a barrage. Even EDF who own the world’s largest barrage have no interest in building another barrage. They recently invested in tidal stream.

I trust your Commissioners are aware of this fact and will weigh it when making their recommendations. There are a number of very highly-respected Commissioners whose reputations will be impacted by this report and it would be a shame to ask them to sign off on a report without them being fully informed by you, if you ask them to recommend spending yet more public money on the Severn Barrage and continue to delay the commercial installation of privately-funded tidal lagoons whose aggregated output would dwarf the output of the Severn Barrage and cost the public nothing.

Best wishes,

Peter Ullman