Wave Power for Maine

This article, Harnessing the Waves from the Portland Phoenix (week of 4/1/05) reports on the possibility of wave power projects off the coast of Maine. According to the article, the state of Maine, through its Office of Energy Independence and the Maine Technology Institute, is participating in a multi-state study conducted by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to determine whether tidal power is more economical than other forms of renewable energy — such as wind and solar — currently under development. Though the coastal waters don't generate enough surface wave power, there is interest in Maine's tides:

Maine, says Michael Mayhew, energy efficiency engineer at the Public Utilities Commission, has "the biggest hydropower resource in the continental US," with tides ranging from nine to 18 feet, but big tides alone won’t make or break the case for tidal energy. Other issues come into play: transmission capacity, workforce, shipping lanes, fisheries, and environmental impacts, among others. Properly sited tidal turbines would be about the least environmentally intrusive means of producing energy this side of rooftop solar panels, but the details have yet to be worked out.[...]
He’s excited about the study’s potential. "When you start looking at tidal power versus wind," he says, you can get the same energy return with much smaller machines, and fewer of them. "And you can count on it. You know the tides a hundred years from now." This makes tidal power more useful because energy-intensive work in the area of a tidal generating plant could be scheduled around the tides, increasing efficiency. Location is a tricky issue in Maine, though, since the resource tends to be Downeast and the transmission and construction facilities are closer to Portland; how to solve that is one of the questions the feasibility study is supposed to answer.

Maine, along with several other states and Canadian provinces is proceeding with an assessment of tidal resources this year.