| Abstract | Reliable and comprehensive information on Canada’s renewable energy resources due to ocean waves, tidal currents and river currents is of critical importance to many stakeholders, including regulators, planners, policy makers, and developers seeking to identify sites to prototype new technologies, develop business plans, and assess the feasibility of proposed locations for resource development.
A pan-Canadian inventory and mapping of marine renewable energy resources, including those due to tidal currents, was completed in Cornett (2006). This study identified 191 potential sites across Canada where tidal currents are fast enough to justify further consideration and investigation, including 89 sites along Canada’s Pacific coast, 16 sites in Quebec and 35 sites in Atlantic Canada. However, since only minimal information on tidal flows was available in many areas, and a very simple method was used to estimate the energy resource at each site, the resulting estimates were often highly uncertain.
Considerable effort has been directed towards gaining a much better understanding of the tidal energy resources in Nova Scotia (particularly in the Bay of Fundy), and of the wave energy resources along the western shore of Vancouver Island. However, the tidal, river and wave energy resources in other Canadian regions have received much less attention and hence our understanding of these important renewable energy resources remains at a very basic level. This project aims to gain a much better understanding of the substantial tidal resources in the Province of British Columbia, where significant resources are known to exist and where stakeholders such as B.C. Hydro, Water Wall Turbines, Mavi Innovations and others have expressed a keen desire for access to better information. |
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