46 SMITHSONIAN | April 2020
Sometime this summer, Hayman
plans to fl ip a switch that will send
juice generated by the device into
the Digby Neck grid, displacing
a chunk of the coal that provides
about half of Nova Scotia’s energy.
At that moment this unprepossess-
ing rig, which from a distance looks
like a dismasted trimaran awaiting
restoration, will become the only
operational fl oating tidal energy
plant in North America.
Tidal energy is one of the great-
est untapped renewable sources
on the planet. In the United States,
with thousands of miles of coast-
line, developing just 5 percent of
tidal energy’s “identifi ed technical
resource potential,” says the De-
partment of Energy, would generate 12.5 terawatts per year.
That’s enough to power slightly more than 1.1 million typical
U.S. homes. But if tidal power evolves the way wind has, that
number will likely rise. Over the decades, better designs have
allowed wind turbines to generate, economically, in ever less-
windy places. Tidal turbines, too, could eventually be placed
in ever less-speedy currents. The market, says Levi Kilcher, of
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, “will end up be-
ing much larger than we’ve identifi ed so far.”
The Plat-I may seem like a tiny part of this energy revolution,
an obscure project in a remote spot, but it may be just what the
future requires: a simple and replicable energy source, tailored
to the local environment, with batteries or other energy-storage
systems to keep the power fl owing during slack tides. After all,
around 40 percent of the U.S. population lives in counties along
the coast, and tidal devices could also be used in rivers.
Before Hayman’s company can start churning out Plat repli-
cants, though, he must fi rst overcome a monstrous challenge:
operating his technology 140 miles to the northeast, in the fun-
nel-shaped Bay of Fundy, which has
the world’s largest tidal range— 54
feet. Through the bay passes, twice
daily, more than four times the esti-
mated combined fl ow of every river
on earth. That huge mass of water
can move at more than ten miles an
hour and has the potential to gener-
ate 50,000 megawatts, which is by
some estimates enough to power 15
million homes. The Bay of Fundy
is the ultimate test for any ocean-
energy entrepreneur, and for a centu-
ry inventors have been experiment-
ing in its treacherous waters. But the
bay is littered with disasters.HAYMAN, 43, came to tidal power in
the roundabout way of a sailor. BornI hurry down to the harbor to meet Jason Hayman and Ja-
son Clarkson, who work for Sustainable Marine Energy (SME),
the Scotland-based company that developed this nifty device.
We board their workboat, SMEagol, named after the deranged
Hobbit, and head out into the current. I ask Hayman about the
trimaran’s name—Plat-I, or “plat-eye.”
“We’re engineers,” he says, laughing. “ ‘ Plat’ stands for plat-
form, and ‘I’ is for inshore, meaning the device will be moored
in sheltered island sites or coastal passages.” (The Plat-I’s pre-
decessor was the Plat-0, for “off shore,” but the development
team preferred to pronounce it like the Greek philosopher.)
We tie up to the Plat, then pick our way, clinging to a skinny
lifeline, across its 88-foot-long crossbeam—a metal catwalk.
“When there’s a little bit of a swell it can really mess with your
head,” Hayman says.
Along the craft’s stern are four rotors, two barely visible in the
water and two pivoted, for inspection purposes, toward the sky.
At the Plat-I’s slender bow, stout cables tether the craft, through
a mooring turret, to the seabed, allowing it to pivot on the tide,
generating energy on both ebb and
fl ow. “We survived the 140-kilometer
winds of Hurricane Dorian,” Hayman
says, in a tone suggesting that out-
come wasn’t guaranteed.
Crowded into a shipping contain-
er perched on the Plat’s center hull,
we gaze at video monitors that show
the underwater rotors, and Hayman
opens three steel cabinets to reveal
inverters, transformers and other
electronics gear that, using a com-
puter program the team calls its “se-
cret sauce,” processes the water-gen-
erated electrical current to match the
60-hertz heartbeat of the local power
grid. Apparently, any fool can pro-
duce electricity; making it usable is
another matter entirely. MA
P:^GUILBERT^ GATESfor the car ferry yo-yoing back and forth between Bri-
er Island and Long Island, its two 400-horsepower
engines roaring. But as I come around a bend, I spy a
sleek yellow-and-white vessel, not half a mile from
shore, pinned smack in the middle of the notorious-
ly swift current. Though the craft has three nar-
row hulls, and what look like four giant propellers,
it’s not a boat. It is a power plant capable of produc-
ing nearly 280 kilowatts of carbon-free electricity.
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