Fundy deployment

The Sublease provides Atlantis a berth for tidal turbine deployment in the Bay of Fundy, within the demised area of seabed allocated to FORCE under its Head Lease Agreement with Her Majesty the Queen in Right of the Province of Nova Scotia. Subsea electrical cables are currently being laid to each of the four berths at FORCE, providing offtake capacity back to the FORCE’s onshore substation, near the town of Parrsboro, NS.

The Sublease was granted following conclusion of a C$5 million Grant Agreement with Sustainable Development Technology Canada, which was signed in June 2014, and a Project Agreement with the Nova Scotia Department of Energy, which was signed in October 2014.

“We are very pleased to have concluded agreements with FORCE and the Nova Scotia Department of Energy, securing a berth to deploy tidal stream turbines and deliver clean predictable power to the residents of Nova Scotia. Canada in general, and the Bay of Fundy in particular, offer world class tidal energy resource to which our turbine technology is ideally suited. We have been supported in this project by Sustainable Development Technology Canada and I would like to extend my thanks to all parties involved for bringing this project to fruition.”

The Bay of Fundy is well known to mariners as having the largest tidal range in the world. Various locations on the west coast of Britain come close to it.

Under the planned project, Atlantis intends to initially deploy a single 1.5MW AR-1500 tidal turbine system – enough to power up to 750 local homes. Atlantis is currently working with FORCE to determine optimal co-ordinates for deployment of its turbine. The company intends to open a project office in Halifax in early 2015, with turbine deployment operations planned for late 2016.

The Atlantis group holds equity positions in a diverse portfolio of tidal stream development projects, which includes a stake of more than 86% in MeyGen Limited, the company developing the MeyGen project in Scotland. The MeyGen project is the largest consented tidal stream power project in Europe, and is scheduled to commence generation in H1 2016.

Alongside its project development interests, Atlantis owns a portfolio of patents and patent applications relating to tidal power generation and sells tidal generation equipment and engineering services to third party developers as well as its own projects. The Atlantis group, which is revenue generating, also conducts industrial research and development and provides specialist consulting services globally.

Atlantis Resources was admitted to the London Stock Exchange on 20 February 2014, which places it in the rare position of being a tidal energy company progressing towards grid generation that the man in the street can easily invest in (LSE:ARL).

By Jake Frith