Summer intern explores marine energy through fieldwork and resource assessments
Andriesen gives a presentation about her internship work.
October 31, 2024
ACEP summer intern Lydia Andriesen worked on projects with ACEP’s marine energy team.
Andriesen spent half of her internship doing fieldwork with Stephanie Fisher at the Tanana River Hydrokinetic Test Site, or TRTS. She conducted general maintenance of the site and helped prepare for SHARKS testing with BladeRunner Energy, a technology start-up, in July. SHARKS, short for Submarine Hydrokinetic and Riverine Kilo-megawatt Systems, is an ACEP marine energy project to design economically competitive hydrokinetic turbines for tidal and river currents.
She also learned how to deploy instruments such as acoustic doppler current profilers, or ADCP, and single-beam sonars to collect bathymetry data for the TRTS river floor. The data collected with these instruments will help researchers and marine energy innovators determine if the bodies of water scanned have good potential for the generation of marine energy. Andriesen saw the data collection and troubleshooting side of research while working at the TRTS and gained important problem-solving skills for fieldwork.
For the other half of her internship, Andriesen worked with Eloise Petrone Brown on resource assessments for potential hydrokinetic energy projects in rural Alaska. Andriesen used the Marine Hydrokinetic ToolKit, or MHKiT, in Python to analyze ADCP data from 2023 collected in the Kotzebue Channel. From this, she made a workflow to standardize ADCP analysis with MHKiT.
Petrone Brown and Andriesen also traveled to Kotzebue to deploy a mooring with an ADCP for a three-month collection period.
Another critical part of Andriesen’s internship was community involvement. While in Kotzebue, Petrone Brown and Andriesen met with locals to share information about their research.
Marine energy is an extremely promising option for sustainable energy. It makes use of a consistent and plentiful resource, and if implemented correctly it can have minimal impact on surrounding ecosystems. While marine energy is still largely in the research and development phase, the potential for its use in Alaska’s remote communities is immense. Real-world testing at the TRTS as well as resource assessments are critical steps to bringing another sustainable energy option to Alaskans.
ACEP summer intern Lydia Andriesen mounts a Nortek acoustic doppler current profiler for SHARKS testing at the Tanana River Test Site.
Andriesen found it fascinating to see all that goes into the research side of engineering throughout her internship.
“There is so much active problem-solving in the field, and I gained a lot of experience in pivoting when things didn’t go as planned,” she said. “I learned how important it is to be flexible when doing research and how satisfying it is to see something work that has been causing problems for weeks.”
Andriesen also enjoyed interacting with community members. “It was great to talk to communities about the research being done in their town and help keep an open conversation between scientists and locals,” she said.
Hailing from Haines, Alaska, the senior studying mechanical engineering at UAF this fall now has some real-life understanding. “Growing up in a small town, I know the value of this relationship,” Andriesen said.
“And above all, this internship taught me how much I enjoy hands-on work,” she said.
This internship is funded by the National Science Foundation through ACEP’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program. View the final presentation for this project on ACEP’s YouTube Channel. For more information on this project, please contact Stephanie Fisher at sjump@alaska.edu or Eloise Petrone Brown at ejbrown@alaska.edu. Listen to Andriesen on the Oct. 2 segment of the Energy in the North.