During the ceremony, Sauer thanked the City of Eastport and its citizens for their participation in the public/private partnership, the Eastport Port Authority, Cobscook Bay Resource Center, David Morang and Cooke Aquaculture, Maine Technology Institute, Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, and the investors, staff and contractors for the ORPC team. City Manager George Finch spoke about the "Quoddy dream" of nearly 100 years ago when the concept of harnessing the power of the bay was first brought forward by Dexter Cooper. The new generation of tidal energy development may now make the dream a reality. A letter with comments from Senator Kevin Raye was read by Bob Lewis, site manager for ORPC. Raye noted that the prototype unit holds tremendous promise for the production of clean, renewable energy that would reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil and help cut greenhouse emissions.

"The economic and environmental benefits from this clean, sustainable energy resource can be far reaching, and this prototype brings us one step closer to making it a reality," says Sauer.

The barge was actually launched two days after the ceremony, on December 7. More than three years in development, the $1 million demonstration project will test the effectiveness of the Ocean Current Generation (OCGen) technology. The company anticipates this pilot unit -- to be tested over a three week period this month -- could generate as much as 15 to 25 kilowatts of power in a 6 knot current. Currents in Western Passage are in this range. It's estimated that, with a commercial-scale OCGen module with four turbine-generator units (TGUs), enough power could be supplied for 200 homes.

The 25 foot by 4 foot TGU -- which contains two horizontally mounted cylindrical water turbines with a generator placed between the turbines -- will be submerged 30 feet below a barge in Western Passage, north of Dog Island between Eastport and Deer Island. The barge will be held in place by a mooring system as the tidal currents move through the turbines and electricity is generated, metered and then dissipated on the deck of the barge.

Construction work on the TGU began in early October at Maine's Marine Technology Center. "We've had 25 30 people working on the project [at its peak] to bring us to this day," says Robert Lewis. "Everyone is eagerly waiting for testing results." Tests will include "push tests" when the TGU will be pushed at varying speeds to gather data regarding its power generation capabilities.

The demonstration project is the first phase that ORPC has set for commercial development of the OCGen technology. Following this project, the company expects to raise between $12 million and $20 million in venture capital funding, which will be used to build and install full scale OCGen modules at two of its sites. The modules would use two to four turbine TGUs and would include extensive monitoring equipment to assess the potential impacts on the marine environment. The OCGen modules will be deployed and monitored, and data would be collected for at least a year. The development process for the commercial scale modules will involve additional TGU demonstration projects, including one that ORPC hopes to conduct at its Cook Inlet site in Alaska in late summer 2008. ORPC is hoping to install commercial-scale modules in 2012.