March 27, 2025
Earlier this month, the team at Seaspan’s Vancouver Shipyards celebrated the activation of the first of two 440v main switchboards on HMCS Protecteur, a major milestone in the Joint Support Ship’s commissioning schedule.
The main switchboards are critical – they control and distribute power from the ship’s generators to wherever it’s needed, relying on a vast network of cables. At completion, the length of the cables onboard the ship will total over 750km!
While this activation process is referred to as a switchboard ‘light off’, it’s about starting up the switchboards and confirming that the ship can effectively distribute its own power, initially from Shore Power and eventually from its own diesel generators once commissioned.
For Simon Sison, Principal, Test Specialist at Vancouver Shipyards, it was a proud moment. “This was the culmination of an immense amount of planning and collaboration across several years of construction on the JSS1 program. Successfully achieving this switchboard light-off is a real moment of celebration for everyone involved.”
Now that the switchboard light-off is complete, HMCS Protecteur is now one step closer to the sea trials that are scheduled for later this year.