International power giant Alstom revealed its plans to commercialize its industrial-scale Beluga 9 tidal energy turbine in the Bay of Fundy in 2012.
The Beluga 9 is intended for "very powerful currents" and will be the company’s first tidal turbine generator, the firm announced Tuesday.
The underwater turbine will be 13 metres in diameter and 20 metres high, the height of a six-storey building.
"Now, we are firmly establishing ourselves in the tidal stream power business," Michelle Stein, Alstom’s spokeswoman, said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Montreal.
Clean Current Power Systems of Vancouver, B.C., was originally awarded a berth site in the Bay of Fundy and proposed testing its Mark III turbine. Then in 2009, Alstom Hydro of Switzerland partnered with Clean Current and has been working on a redesign of the original proposal.
"So what we’ve done is we’re building on the technology and the experience Clean Current had on their initial demonstrator. Now we are preparing our commercial demonstrator to be tested in the Bay of Fundy," she said.
She said the Beluga 9 prototype is a one-megawatt unit being tested at Alstom’s facilities in Europe and in Quebec. "We’re conducting an extensive series of tests before deploying the turbine at sea," she said.
Alstom will join two other developers — Nova Scotia Power and Minas Basin Pulp and Power of Hantsport — that have berths for turbines on the Bay of Fundy floor.
Nova Scotia Power and its partner, OpenHydro of Dublin, Ireland, have experienced the trials and tribulations of developing working tidal turbines. Most recently, OpenHydro failed to retrieve its damaged turbine from the floor of the Minas Passage for an inspection, and has postponed the recovery until December.
Patty Faith, Nova Scotia Power spokeswoman, said the companies may go back again next week and try and recover the turbine, depending on the weather.
"It is the last window of opportunity until spring," she said Tuesday.
The two companies deployed a $10-million turbine in the Minas Passage about 10 kilometres west of Parrsboro last November. They discovered that two blades — made from blends of plastic and glass — on the 400-tonne experimental turbine had broken off in May. The malfunction is forcing the company to pull the device out of the water a year ahead of schedule.
"We feel our technology is different. However, we will continue to monitor the experience of those companies and obviously take lessons learned and see what we can do to ensure the success of our product," said Stein of Alstom.
Minas Basin Pulp and Power and its partner, Marine Current Turbines Ltd. of Bristol, England, will join Alstom and deploy their turbine in 2012.
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