Shore Station

An essential part of the NEPTUNE Canada observatory is the shore station. This building is where the submarine cable will terminate, and where all of the equipment required to provide power to the submerged plant will be housed, as well as the telecommunications equipment that will communicate with the instruments and recover the data from them.

The shore station is located in Port Alberni. In 2004, UVic was fortunate to purchase the cable station that was built for a trans-Pacific telecommunications system that was being sold by Teleglobe (now VSNL). Structurally, the building was constructed to the highest standards and is still in sound condition. However, the NEPTUNE Canada power requirements are significantly higher than those of the original Teleglobe system, so it is necessary to upgrade the capacity of the power systems within the facility. Other components of the cable station require modernisation to take advantage of advances in technology since the facility was built, as well as replace building systems that have reached the end of their life or were removed by Teleglobe when it vacated the premises.

The capacity of the existing power supply from BC Hydro is being increased from 300kVA to 500kVA to support the larger power demand. In conjunction with this, the main electrical switchgear within the building will be upgraded and modernised. The existing three generators within the facility are still in good condition and will be retained, although the control scheme will need to be modified in light of the change in power demand. The generators will start automatically within a minute of a BC Hydro power outage, and will allow the entire facility to operate independently of the utility supply for as long as necessary.

The largest consumer of power will be the Alcatel-Lucent Power Feed Equipment (PFE), which will supply up to 8 Amps at 10,000V to the submarine cable. In order to assure continuity of power to the system, the power to the PFE will go through an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). The UPS has its own set of batteries that provide the necessary power to run the critical equipment until such time as the generators have started and been switched into service, following a utility power outage. The UPS also provides filtering and surge protection to ensure that no power disturbances from the primary AC power system will impact on the PFE or telecommunications equipment.

Given the difficulty of replacing any of the telecommunications equipment, the fire protection system in the cable station will be modernised. At the same time, an Inergen gas fire suppression system will be provided for the telecommunications and power equipment rooms. In the event of a fire, smoke detectors will initiate an Inergen gas discharge, which will dump gas at high pressure into the zone where the fire is detected, displacing sufficient oxygen from the room atmosphere that combustion cannot be sustained. The Inergen gas is inert, environmentally friendly and safe to humans.

To minimise downtime due to potential equipment failure, an environmental monitoring system (EMS) will be installed. The EMS will gather data from all of the infrastructure equipment (e.g. generators, UPS, main switchgear, air conditioning, fire protection and intrusion detection systems), record the results to a database and allow continuous, real-time monitoring of the cable station. This monitoring will allow many problems to be resolved before they result in system downtime, and will initiate alarms for immediate remedial action. Many of the upgrade activities are currently being implemented, and it is anticipated that most of the work will be completed by fall 2007.

The shore station, with its large, climate controlled equipment room, reliable power and high bandwidth communications, offers a range of opportunities for scientists. UVic is in discussions with the Geological Survey of Canada-Pacific to locate a UNAVCO seismometer at the site, as well as a GPS station to investigate crustal movement. This Plate Boundary Observatory borehole would be part of a new seismic network along the west coast of North America as part of the Earthscope Project funded by the US National Science Foundation. The station will be used for scientific research and student programs related to the NEPTUNE Canada Project for a wide range of users.