Tanana River Test Site Update

The AHERC team has been back at the Tanana River Test Site over the past week deploying a 5kW New Energy turbine that was previously utilized in Ruby, Alaska, for a project in 2010. On Monday, Paul Duvoy and Jeremy Kasper worked on setting up and installing all of the monitoring instruments needed for the work including the Blueview imaging sonar and the Simrad split beam sonar. They also installed the Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) and Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter (ADV) to measure velocity and turbulence velocity, respectively.

Interns Stephanie Jump and Andrew Cannavo went to the Test Site on Tuesday and spent the day verifying instruments were working, programming the data logger, and preparing to collect fish samples behind the turbine with the inclined plane trap. The New Energy turbine was also deployed into the Tanana River on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the turbine was connected to its power electronics for power output monitoring.  That afternoon the turbine brake was released and it was allowed to start spinning.

New Energy Turbine (with inclined fish trap located behind it) deployed behind larger Murdock Testing Barge. Photo credit J. Kasper, ACEP/UAF.