A Halifax-based company is building its first commercial tidal power generator in Cape Breton and it expects to begin selling electricity soon after it installs its technology in the Bay of Fundy later this year.

Jamie MacNeil, executive vice-president of BigMoon Power, said the first of 18 units is being assembled at East Coast Metal Fabrication in the Sydport Industrial Park.

Each unit has a large wheel suspended between the pontoons of a 30-metre barge anchored to the ocean floor. The barge can swivel to remain facing the current.

“It’s a 21st-century adaptation of very old technology in a Roman paddlewheel,” MacNeil said.

The equipment has to be robust to withstand the harsh conditions of a saltwater environment with some of the highest tides in the world, and it has to be protected from debris while minimizing the impact on fish and marine mammals, he said.

The barge-and-wheel system can do all of that and still produce electricity that is affordable, because BigMoon has spent about $20 million on research and development over the last six years, MacNeil said.

BigMoon has been in operation since 2015, testing its theories and prototypes in the Bay of Fundy, and now has a contract to supply electricity to Nova Scotia Power.

The company will receive subsidized rates for its energy, but only at the beginning, MacNeil said. After that, the project will be competitive with other forms of renewable energy.

He said he thinks they can compete.

“We know that we can and we have taken a big step forward in the contracts that we already have in being able to demonstrate that the price of tidal is coming down dramatically.”

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