Marine energy projects receive $1.5 million
The frozen Yukon River winds through Interior Alaska just upstream from the village of Galena in December 2024. The under-ice hydrokinetics project aims to develop a technology that can produce electricity from the water moving under the frozen surface.
December 10, 2024
By Yuri Bult-Ito
The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $1.5 million to two University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Alaska Center for Energy and Power projects to advance marine energy research and education.
Marine energy — power harnessed from waves, tides and ocean and river currents — is abundant. While not yet widely used, the total potential marine energy available in the U.S. using existing technology is equivalent to nearly 60% of the country’s power generation.
The “Application of under-ice hydrokinetics for Alaska” project, the larger of the two ACEP projects with an award of $1 million, aims to advance a reactive reversible blade turbine, or RRBT. ACEP and its partners at Creek Tides Energy and Power and the Southwest Research Institute will develop and test the turbine at UAF’s Tanana River Hydrokinetic Test Site in Nenana.
The RRBT can harness energy from slowly moving waterways and will be adapted to operate under the ice in frozen rivers. This could generate electricity for lighting and communications in remote locations in Alaska during winter months.
“This is an exciting opportunity to partner with the private sector to develop a technology specifically for operating in frozen rivers and generating small scale electricity for off-grid applications in remote Alaska,” said Ben Loeffler, Pacific Marine Energy Center co-director at ACEP and the principal investigator of the project.
Researchers will field test a prototype in Alaska, using the grant funding.
With an award of half a million dollars, the other project, “Alaska Students in marine energy,” aims to equip undergraduate students to enter the workforce or graduate school in marine energy in Alaska.
UAF engineering student Lydia Andriesen mounts an acoustic Doppler current profiler for testing during her 2024 ACEP summer internship.
The project will build on ACEP’s existing undergraduate internship and energy engineering training programs. It will introduce undergraduate students to the marine energy field with intensive place-based hydrokinetic training, summer research internships and senior capstone design courses.
“This project will bring together the superpowers of ACEP’s leadership in riverine and marine energy research and the excellence of the UAF College of Engineering and Mines,” said Daisy Huang, associate professor of energy at UAF and ACEP and the principal investigator of the project.
“We will attract nationwide interest in marine energy but specifically emphasize developing homegrown Alaskan talent and giving CEM students a platform to shine in the marine energy field,” she said.
The goal is to develop a self-sustaining, cohesive program that fosters the development of a skilled marine energy workforce in both the research and commercial sectors. The effort will create ways for students who are likely to remain in Alaska to help communities adopt marine energy and to participate in research and design of new technologies.
ACEP summer intern Jack Schuster tries to steer debris away from an acoustic Doppler current profiler at the Tanana River Hydrokinetic Test Site in Nenana in July 2024.
“This is a fantastic way to both motivate their educational goals as well as develop a skilled workforce for Alaska's increasingly diversified energy sector,” Huang said.
The two awards are part of the investment of more than $18 million by DOE focused on advancing marine energy and offshore wind technologies. The DOE funded 27 research and development projects at 17 universities.