A 2005 paper by Roger H. Charlier, Lo’ic Menanteau, and Marie-Claire P. Chaineu was recently brought to the Tide Mill Institute’s attention by Dutch sculptor and artist Lex Elsevier. The paper presents “an overview of tide mills throughout the world with emphasis . . . on recent research in the Iberian Peninsula, from the Basque Country in the North to the Gulf of Cadiz in the South, and the restoration of several mills in Brittany (France) over the last decade or so.”
Tide mill enthusiasts will enjoy reading this 18-year-old report not only for the historical information it contains, but also for its call to resurrect small scale tide mill sites for providing power locally. These days, the idea of exploiting smaller energy sources for local consumption is called distributed generation.
“The Rise and Fall of the Tide Mill,” appeared in Ocean Sciences Bridging the Millennia. A Spectrum of Historical Accounts published by the Journal of Coastal Research.
Read “The Rise and Fall of the Tide Mill” courtesy of the Flemish Marine Institute (VLIZ. be).