Interest increases in Wiscasset considering its potential

It is being highlighted that Wiscasset boasts a perfect combination of power grid infrastructure, tidal waters and eager planners and it can also become a world's hub of ocean-based energy.

One group hopes to burrow 2,000 feet underground and use gravity to pull coastal waters through turbines, while another group wants to stretch an undersea cable to Boston that would convert AC currents to DC currents.

"There's the possibility that all three of the current projects will come into being: The tidal project that we're working with the town on, the geo-hydro project and the DC high volume transmission line from Wiscasset to Boston," Peter Arnold, sustainability coordinator for the Wiscasset-based Chewonki Foundation, told The Times Record.

"These three big projects, that are all ocean-based, could dump between $2 billion and $3 billion into the local area," said Arnold.

Few months back Chewonki Foundation's offer of grant money to apply for a permit to do and fund research for tidal electric power potential on the Sheepscot River was accepted. The proposal "would counter a preliminary three-year permit" that the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission (FERC) granted to Natural Currents Energy Services, it was said then. The firm was given approval to conduct research and perform acts to determine whether its proposed tidal power generating facility is feasible.

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