World’s Most Powerful Tidal Turbine Gears Up for Operation

by David Hoyle

Editor’s note: This post by TMI member David Hoyle is TMI’s first digest of recent tidal energy development news with links to the full articles. Further updates will be posted regularly, in keeping with one of Tide Mill Institute’s missions: promoting tidal energy development. Thank you David!

Scottish company Orbital Marine Power will commission its Orbital O2 tidal turbine near the Orkney Islands. The 2 MW tidal turbine is billed as the world’s largest (compare with 1.5 MW MeyGen turbines, below). Note that in Scotland 2 MW is touted as power for 2000 homes – in the US the claim would be more like 300-400 homes. Also mentioned is a project to gather data on the tidal energy potential off of the Scilly Islands SW of England. The article concludes with the following statistics: 260 KW of tidal stream capacity was installed in Europe in 2020 versus 14.7 GW of wind capacity installed in the same year. Thanks to Richard Duffy and others for pointing out this article.
Read the article at cnbc.com.

More Tidal Energy Headlines

The world’s most powerful tidal turbine launches in Scotland
This is another article about Orbital Marine Power’s Orbital O2 turbine, but it includes some excellent animations showing how the turbine will be installed and how it will operate.
Read the article at electrec.co.

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Tide Mills Solve 18th-Century Energy Crisis

Click for enlarged view. — Today’s pedestrian causeway was built on the
foundation of the old mill dam. Barrell’s Mill Pond is on the right, and York River is left. (Photo by Robert Gordon.)

We usually think of power shortages as 21st-Century phenomena, recently in news about California and Texas. But as early as 1720, colonial York, Maine, also faced a power shortage that threatened the economic growth of the settlement. According to a recent research paper by Bob Gordon, every possible site in the early town had by then been exploited for its water power, but there still wasn’t enough energy to support and expand an export economy that relied on grain mills and sawmills.

To solve the problem – and make a profit while doing so – 19 men with vision organized to dam York’s Meeting House Creek, creating a mill pond to power sawmills and grist mills using the energy of the tides. The project tripled the mechanical energy available in York and was the largest tidal power project in New England at the time. The business, named New Mills Company, turned out to be a great financial success for its owners.

The milling operations prospered for decades after their establishment, but President Jefferson’s trade embargo, the War of 1812, a depression and the depletion of the nearby forests eventually led to the failure of business at the site. Later entrepreneurs attempted ice harvesting operations and real estate development around the pond, but they failed. Finally in 1922, a local society came to the rescue, repairing the original dam so pedestrian traffic could cross the mouth of the creek.

The site of the dam and the tidal pond, now called Barrell’s Mill Pond, is today a peaceful, photogenic spot with a graceful causeway over the old dam leading to Steedman Woods Nature Reserve. Except for the explanatory plaque near the east end of the dam, little evidence remains of the busy industrial operations once centered there.

Cape Cod Mill Values: Tide vs. Wind

By Tim Richards

The miller was one of the early Cape [Cod] society’s most important citizens…. The mill and he were so important to the towns that they both enjoyed a tax-exempt status. Also, the miller was exempt from serving in the militia and in public office.
— Jim Gilbert, The Provincetown [Mass.] Advocate, April 4, 1977.

In seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth century America, mills ranked among a town’s most important institutions. As a matter of town business, communities offered incentives to secure and retain the services of skilled millers. The financial value of the Truro Tide Mill on Cape Cod in Massachusetts provides an additional dimension to this narrative.

1790 recorded bill of sale transferring ownership of one-eighth share of the Truro Tide Mill for twenty-four pounds, six shillings. (Click to enlarge.)

In 1790, soon after the Truro Tide Mill went into service, one of its owners passed away. Samuel Rich’s estate sold his one eighth share in the mill complex to Benjamin Hinckley (possibly already a co-owner) for twenty-four pounds, six shillings. Converting pounds to 1790 dollars, that sales price valued the entire mill complex at over $850.

To put this valuation in perspective, in the 1787-1790 period two Cape Cod houses sold for an average of $165 and salt meadow adjoining the Mill Pond sold for an average of $32 per acre. These salt meadows were among the most expensive undeveloped land on Cape Cod, probably due to their value in producing hay and as a location for salt-works.

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Discovering a Tide Mill in Truro

by Tim Richards

When my wife Meg Clarke and I bought a house on Mill Pond Road in Truro Massachusetts four years ago, we had no idea that a tide mill once operated on the pond. Eventually we asked ourselves “Why is the pond called Mill Pond?”

Sunset as seen from the Mill Pond dam. (Photo by Margaret Clarke.)

We knew little about tide mills. We did, however, appreciate the power of the tides. I grew up sailing on the Pamet River in Truro, where every outing requires respect for tidal currents and where sailing schedules are dictated by the 8-12 foot tides. I also had a professional interest in tidal power because renewable energy policy, including tidal energy, was an important part of my work for the General Electric Company.

In November 2018, my father and I visited the Truro Historical Society’s Cobb Archive to research the history of Mill Pond. With help from the Archive volunteers, we found that Mill Pond was aptly named: an 1890 history of Barnstable County includes a sentence describing the Truro mill. The Cobb Archive also included Truro maps dated between 1795 and 1858, which showed a mill on the pond (see detail from the 1858 map below). Lesson one from our research was “pay attention to the obvious!” If a pond is called “Mill Pond” or a hill “Mill Hill” it is a good bet that there was once a mill in that location.

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Quincy’s Souther Tide Mill

Every day, thousands of commuters making their way in and out of Boston pass within 200 feet of the historic Souther tide mill site next to the Southern Artery (Route 3A) in Quincy, Mass. What had started as Ebenezer Thayer’s tide-powered grist mill about 1806 passed to John Souther in 1815 and became a grist mill and a saw mill. The site also had a shipyard, a wharf and a canal lock. Steam power and the railroad brought the end of the grist mill business shortly after the Civil War, but the sawmill continued operating until much later.

The only building remaining on the site today was mostly constructed in and after 1854 to repair and augment the fire-damaged but partially surviving 1806 grist mill. Thanks to efforts by the nonprofit Friends of Souther Tide Mill, the building has been partially restored and may someday open as a working grist mill and museum.

John Goff, an historic preservation professional and co-founder of the Tide Mill Institute, wrote two comprehensive studies and reports between ca. 1991 and 1995, which formed the basis of this edited paper. John’s paper traces the history of the site and buildings, and it explains how tidal flow powered milling and sawing machinery at the site.

Read John Goff’s “Souther Tide Mill”

For additional Souther Mill history and information about supporting Friends of Souther Tide Mill, visit southertidemill.org.

Souther tide mill location in Quincy, Mass., about 10 miles south of Boston. (Google Maps.) Click for full size map.

Undated newspaper photo of Souther Mill, probably mid 20th Century. (Courtesy of Friends of Souther Tide Mill.)

Sketch by John Goff showing how the Souther Mill site may have looked in the mid-1800s. It consisted of a grist mill, saw mill, shipyard, wharf and canal lock.

Walter Minchinton’s “Tidemills of Rhode Island”

by Patrick Malone, Professor Emeritus, Brown University

1880s photo of John Kelley’s Barrington, R.I., tide mill on the cover of the February 1998 *Rhode Island History*. (Click to enlarge.) “Tidemills of Rhode Island” appeared on pages 20-27 of the issue. (Cover reproduced with permission from Rhode Island Historical Society.)

Walter Edward Minchinton (1921-1996) was a British industrial archaeologist and economic historian. In 1964, after teaching for 16 years at University College Swansea, he became head of the new Economic History Department and Professor of Economic History at the University of Exeter. His academic publication record includes numerous studies that he authored, co-authored, or edited. Following his retirement as an Emeritus Professor in 1986, he continued to do research and write about industrial topics, with a primary focus on tide mills.

The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University provided Professor Minchinton with a fellowship in 1993 that allowed him to study early American tide mills. While in Rhode Island, he investigated the tide mills of that state and collaborated with local scholars such as Dr. Richard Greenwood, one of the early members of the Tide Mill Institute. The Rhode Island Historical Society assisted Minchinton’s investigation and provided images for the article that he submitted to its journal, Rhode Island History.

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