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ORPC moving ahead with East Foreland tidal project in inlet
Alan Bailey for Petroleum News
During a Feb. 13 online presentation, tidal energy company Ocean Renewable Power Co. provided information about its American Tidal Energy Project, a project to test the potential to obtain electrical power from the strong tidal currents in Cook Inlet. ORPC analyst Eva White said that the company sees the project as a first step to developing a standalone commercially viable tidal energy market in the Cook Inlet region.
"We know that that is not going to happen tomorrow, so our first step is to do the American Tidal Energy Project," White said.
Offshore East Foreland area The project involves deploying tidal power devices underwater, offshore the East Foreland area of the Kenai Peninsula. The power generation system will connect to a nearby substation on Homer Electric Association's power grid. The substation, as currently configured, can only accept a maximum of 2 megawatts of power from the tidal system. Although that limits the scale of the project to two tidal turbines, that is a sufficient scale to test the technology.
Funding for the project is coming from the U.S. Department of Energy as a consequence of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, with funding awarded in February 2024 and the project starting on June 1, 2024.
Two tidal energy projects, including the American Tidal Energy Project, were selected for federal funding. A "down select" process will begin in April, with ultimately one of the projects selected for additional funding, White said. The initial grant was for $3 million, while the additional grant will be for $29 million, she said.
However, if ORPC does not obtain the additional grant, the company will try to figure out an alternative approach to the funding, White said.
A number of organizations are partnering with ORPC and supporting the project, with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory also providing technical support.
Currently ORPC has a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission preliminary permit for the project and is in the process of applying for a pilot license for the planned tidal energy facility.
Phase one of the project The company is currently engaged in phase one of the project and is focusing on the required environmental permitting. The company has also been evaluating the turbine technology that will be used.
The company considered three different turbine designs and eventually settled on the use of two technologies: a Proteus single rotor turbine that would sit on the seafloor, and an ORPC TidGen80 submerged crossflow turbine, that would be moored to the seafloor and supported by a buoyancy system. ORPC has previously installed one of its TidGen systems in the Kvichak River, at the village of Igiugig, near Lake Iliamna. That system has been successfully generating power for Igiugig and has reduced the village's use of diesel fuel for power generation.
The two turbines planned for East Foreland would generate the 2 megawatts of power anticipated from the test site.
The design concept involves the use of directional drilling, so that power and data cables can be installed underground, thus avoiding any interference with set netting or recreational activities that are conducted in the area, White said.
Phase two of the project at East Foreland is scheduled to start this year and run through to 2027. This phase will involve field surveys, together with final engineering and permitting. Phases three to five, expected to run from 2027 to 2030, will involve procurement, installation and operation of the system.
No impact on vessel traffic Nate Hayes, ORPC chief engineer, said that although a TidGen turbine floats inside the water column, ORPC can maintain the device at depths where it will not impede vessel traffic. The devices are about 58 feet wide and 20 feet tall, he said. He commented that ORPC has conducted environmental monitoring at various sites where the devices have been installed, including at Igiugig. No significant negative environmental impacts have been detected.
Steve Allsop, product application analyst at Proteus Marine Renewables, the manufacturer of the Proteus turbines, said that his company has more than 22 years of experience of working in tidal energy and has led 25 deployments of the technology across six countries. The 170-ton Proteus turbine uses a turbine configuration that is similar to a wind turbine, and sits on the seafloor below the water surface, creating no navigational hazard or surface impact. The rotor is designed to rotate at a speed of 5 seconds per rotation.
No negative environmental impacts Monitoring of the devices in operation in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Japan over several years has not revealed any negative impacts. Environmental data has been analyzed in conjunction with universities and research groups and has included observations such as porpoises evading a turbine during turbine operation, Allsop said. In the Naru Strait in Japan Proteus has conducted visual monitoring of fish swimming around a rotor, he added.
White said that ORPC is planning environmental studies in support of permitting and engineering efforts. In phase two of the project the company will conduct site characterization surveys, measuring, for example, water velocities and the baseline acoustics of what is a noisy tidal environment. Although both turbines are understood to have low environmental impacts, ORPC wants to ensure that the devices do not have significant impacts on marine mammals such as beluga whales. And the company will conduct seasonal beluga whale monitoring, a cultural resources assessment and a terrestrial habitat assessment, White said.
Then, the company will operate a protected species monitoring and mitigation plan during the facility construction and operation phases of the project.
Adaptive management approach ORPC's adaptive management approach involves talking to regulatory agencies early in the project and then throughout the project process, to tell the agencies about what is happening and solicit their feedback, White said. The idea is to identify any issues while the project progresses, rather than finding problems when the relevant documents are written up.
White commented that the area off East Foreland is known to have high tidal current flow speeds. The area is considered the premier tidal development site in the United States. Hence the choice of this area for ORPC's pilot project. Moreover, the project location lies relatively close to electrical infrastructure on the Kenai Peninsula, thus minimizing the cost of the cabling that will be required to connect the project to the electricity grid.
--ALAN BAILEY
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