OERA bolsters Canadian tidal energy research

 
Offshore Energy Research Association of Nova Scotia (OERA) has awarded funding to four marine energy research projects.

The funding was awarded through the Open Call Program in which OERA awards a maximum of C$20,000 to various projects, where such funds are leveraged with financial support from others to cover the total project costs, the organization said.

The projects funded include the one led by Acadia University’s Trevor Avery which will seek to provide a analysis framework for long-term and cumulative effects monitoring of turbine effects on specific marine species populations.

Another project, also proposed by Acadia University and led by Anna Redden and Brian Sanderson, received funding support to explore application of low cost drifters with suspended hydrophone arrays in assessing harbor porpoise use of the water column and spatial overlap with marine renewable energy devices in the Minas Passage

Luna Ocean Consulting grabbed funding for the project that will research the use of drifters to address uncertainties in the spatial variation of tidal flows speeds, including turbulence, within the Minas Passage with focus on the Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy (FORCE) site.

The fourth project supported in the call is related to marine geoscience. Led by Todd Ventura, from Saint Mary’s University, the project aims to develop a set of geochemical diagnostic tools that can be applied to potential source rocks of differing ages throughout the Maritimes Basin.

OERA is a non-profit organization that funds and facilitates collaborative offshore energy and environmental research and development including examination of renewable energy resources and their interaction with the marine environment, with the aim to enable the sustainable development of Nova Scotia energy resources.