2021 Highlights

Technology Demonstration

• In February 2021, Sustainable Marine announced the completion and launch of its new 420kW PLAT-I 6.40 floating tidal energy platform at A.F. Theriault & Son Ltd. in Meteghan, Nova Scotia. The system travelled to Grand Passage to undergo commissioning and testing.
• In July 2021, BigMoon announced it had begun assembly of its first device at East Coast Metal Fabrication in the Sydport Industrial Park. BigMoon plans to build a total of 18 devices, each generating about half a megawatt of electricity, or enough to power about 500 homes.
• In August, DP Energy deployed a small monitoring platform in Berth E. The monitoring platform contains sensors which will be used to demonstrate equipment functionality at the FORCE site. DP Energy also announced it had entered into a Joint Development Agreement (JDA) with Chubu Electric Power Company (Chubu) and Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha (“K” LINE) to develop the first phase of the Uisce Tapa tidal project at FORCE. 
• Also in August, Sustainable Marine announced SCHOTTEL Hydro, Sustainable Marine's German engineering partner, had collaborated with the Center of Wind Power Drives at RWTH Aachen University to test its latest generation SIT250 drivetrain, and Sustainable Marine’s new support vessel, the Tidal Pioneer, arrived in Nova Scotia. The Tidal Pioneer is a multicat, and is 26 metres long and 11 metres wide. Its offset superstructure allows for a large working deck area, and the square bow is equipped for pushing barges, similar to Dominion Diving's Dominion Warrior. 

FORCE

• In 2021, as part of the Risk Assessment Program (RAP), FORCE installed and integrated two (2) radar systems in the Minas Passage, one on the FORCE Visitor Centre, and one next to the Cape Sharp Lighthouse, providing full coverage of the Minas Passage, and assembled and commissioned a third mobile radar system that can be set-up anywhere to develop a spatiotemporal flow atlas. Staff also also developed flow atlases utilizing radar-derived velocities to support work on a fish atlas of the Bay of Fundy. FORCE also completed a range test deployment in April 2021, critical to understanding the effective range of the acoustic receivers over the course of different flow speeds at the FORCE site so team members can adequately space receivers for the RAP program when it comes to validating a fish tagging model. 
• The FAST 1 platform, which supports the VECTRON, was deployed in Grand Passage. Data gathered from the deployment includes ultra-high resolution velocity data at turbine hub height. These data are being used to build the software package tailored to support loading and power performance assessment of tidal turbines.
• FORCE completed repair work to the substation access road, implemented enhanced security at the substation and critical to the operation and maintenance of the facility, complete pre-energization testing requirements on MV interconnection equipment. FORCE moved its corporate office to 75 Alderney Drive in Dartmouth in winter 2020/21.

Other projects included

• Continued ADCP deployments and data collection to better understand the resource and to characterize wake effects of turbines 
•  A focused effort to characterize the wake from Black Rock as RADAR has identified significant turbulence about the relatively large geological mass 
• MRE GIS: display and communicate large and complex data sets 
•  Integration of FORCE data into the Canadian Integrated Offshore Observation System (CIOOS) 
•  As part of the CIOOS project, an online, 3D data visualization tool of the site