Abstract
The Water Wall Turbine (WWT) project has produced the world’s first ever deployment of a tidal energy system feeding into a remote microgrid with a sophisticated energy storage system to displace diesel. While not without challenges, this project has achieved the original overall objective of constructing a cost competitive tidal energy device for remote, west coast ocean and river environments.
Dent Island Lodge offered to be our first customer based on an agreement to displace expensive diesel generation. Their cost of barge-delievered diesel power was approximately 65 cents per kWh. The WWT project installed a 1MW turbine driving a 500 kW power plant for Dent Island Lodge.
The project began in early 2014 after competition of an initial front end engineering and design (FEED) study supported by the ecoENERGY Innovation Program. The majority of year one was dedicated to detailed construction design and establishment of the supply chain. WWTurbine 1 was launch ready for deployment in July 2016.