UAF receives grant to test hydrokinetic turbine performance

December 2, 2020

Photo by Paul Duvoy. An aerial view shows a hydrokinetic turbine platform at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power's Tanana River test site near Nenana in July 2020.

The Alaska Center for Energy and Power has been awarded $3.3 million in federal funding to develop river turbine generators to lower the cost of energy.

ACEP, an applied energy research program based at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, received the funding to develop new economically competitive hydrokinetic turbine designs for tidal and riverine currents. The project will advance turbine technology from BladeRunner Energy and generator technology from C-Motive Technologies, creating a system that could be well-suited for providing power to remote Alaska communities.

The award comes from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, known as ARPA-E.

“ARPA-E awards are super competitive, so the fact that we were awarded one reflects well on ACEP, the UAF College of Engineering and Mines, the University of Alaska Fairbanks and our commercial partners,” said Jeremy Kasper, ACEP deputy directory for research.

BladeRunner Energy's technology offers a design that is easy to deploy and avoids debris, two key attributes for generating hydrokinetic energy in Alaska. The system will be tested in Nenana and in ACEP's Power Systems Integration Lab in Fairbanks during the three-year project.

The project team is a mix of academic researchers and commercial partners. They'll study a system that includes field-tested components. That means the technology is much closer to being usable in real-world settings, Kasper said.

“For UAF, I see a real opportunity for growth in these type of projects that combine applied academic research with emerging tech companies,” he said.

ADDITIONAL CONTACT: Jeremy Kasper, 907-474-5194, jlkasper@alaska.edu

ON THE WEB: For additional information about ACEP and this project, visit http://acep.uaf.edu/.