Acadia-led tidal energy research team receives $475K in provincial funding
Acadia University’s Dr. Richard Karsten (Mathematics, Acadia Tidal Energy Institute) is the lead researcher on a collaborative project that will receive $475K in funding from the Nova Scotia Research Trust. Announced yesterday at Dalhousie University’s Ocean Sciences building by Premier Stephen McNeil, the multi-institutional tidal energy project will use state-of-the-art field equipment and high-end computing infrastructure to investigate the impact of the environment on tidal turbines and the impact of tidal turbines on the environment.
The $475K in provincial funding constitutes two Research Nova Scotia Trust awards:
$153,000 for Acadia University (Drs. Richard Karsten, Anna Redden, and Mike Stokesbury)
$322,000 for Dalhousie University (led by Dr. Alex Hay)
Both awards will support the Acadia-led, multi-institutional research project "Environmental Monitoring, Modelling and Forecasting Infrastructure for Instream Tidal Energy,” worth $2.8 million in research funding.
In addition to $475K of provincial funding, the project is supported by $1.1 million from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, as well as matching funds from the vendors supplying the equipment.
The funds will enable the creation of the world’s first observation and prediction system for investigating the physical and biological marine environment in high-flow conditions at turbulence-resolving scales. Combined with the Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy’s test site, this observation and prediction system will be used to provide the scientific evidence needed to determine the scale of a tidal energy industry in the Bay of Fundy that is economically feasible and environmentally acceptable.
This project involves 10 collaborators from Acadia University, Dalhousie University, the University of New Brunswick and Memorial University.