Hydrokinetic finds hope without dams

Emerging technology promises cheap electricity from rivers with dams, project proposals springing up around the state in 2008

Eric Lidji

Petroleum News

Hydroelectric projects often get damned because they’re, well, dammed.

Traditional hydroelectric projects can produce cheap, sustainable power by controlling the flow of water to run turbines. But concerns about the environmental impact of the large dams required for hydroelectric have made projects increasingly hard to permit.

In Alaska, utilities have long considered hydroelectric as a way around the unpredictable rise and fall of electricity prices caused by a dependence on diesel fuel. Hydroelectricity is the only alternative power source currently in wide-scale use in Alaska, with several larger projects in the Southeast and Southcentral parts of the state.

For decades, efforts to diversify the fuel supply in Alaska have focused on massive hydroelectric projects like dams on the Susitna River, Chakachamna Lake or the Yukon River. Those projects have stumbled over both financial and environmental obstacles.

But over the past two years, startup companies and small local utilities have rushed to study projects that could generate electricity from Alaska waters without massive dams.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued seven preliminary permits for tidal projects in Alaska in 2007. But toward the end of the year, the federal permitting agency made it easier for applicants to get early permitting for hydrokinetic projects.

So far this year, FERC has issued 13 preliminary permits for companies to study proposed hydrokinetic projects in Alaska rivers. The federal permitting agency also issued several preliminary permits for early work on “low-impact” hydropower projects.

Hydrokinetic technologies generate electricity from the natural movement of water, like the flow of a river, while low-impact hydropower uses natural elevation changes to avoid building a major dam, and possibly even eliminating the need for a dam entirely.

“We can just look at the Lower 48 and see that putting massive dams on free-flowing rivers is problematic,” said Bob Grimm with Alaska Power & Telephone Co., one of the companies pursing hydrokinetic technology in Alaska. “We didn’t know that 50 years ago or 75 years ago when those major investments were made by the government, but now we do and we certainly don’t want to repeat those mistakes.”

Technology mostly untested

“It is probably the last technology that gained attention during the renewables explosions. … When you look at what’s happened over the past decade or so in terms of new renewables or new technologies, folks have looked everywhere else but the water,” said Mark Stover with Hydro Green Energy LLC, a startup pursing projects in Alaska.

FERC recently set out rules to ease projects into existence. The preliminary permits issued in Alaska and elsewhere only allow a company to study a project for three years.

Actual construction requires a “pilot license,” where companies can build and test a 5-megawatt project for five years before applying for a full license lasting decades.

FERC is currently processing dozens of applications for pilot projects along almost every major river in the country, including projects along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

Pros and cons of Alaska

That added cost creates economic wiggle room even during times of lower oil prices.

But in many other ways, Alaska makes any energy project much more challenging.

Almost every major river in the state freezes up for several months each winter. While a hydrokinetic turbine might be able to work under the ice, it probably can’t survive the brutal month each spring when jagged chunks of ice break off and shuttle downstream.

Working in rural communities also creates unique transportation obstacles. Companies will have to ship large pieces of equipment to villages not connected by roads.

And then there are still the large unknowns for all hydrokinetic projects, one being the “sushi question,” or how to deter fish from colliding with the spinning turbine blades.

There is also a question about the technology. While hydrokinetic is attracting a lot of interest, it is not yet standardized. At least two of the companies looking at Alaska are using in-house designs, while others are hiring third parties to build turbines.

“I think the idea finally came of age,” Grimm said. “I don’t think the technology is mature yet.”

Hydrokinetic projects on deck in Alaska

Turbine in Yukon next spring

Alaska Power & Telephone supplies power to dozens of rural communities around the state, including more hydroelectric projects than any other utility in Alaska.

The company began studying hydrokinetic technologies in the late 1990s, eventually teaming up with the Maryland-based UEK Corp. to build a turbine. The Denali Commission gave the utility a $1.6 million grant last year to pursue the project.

Eagle is an isolated community, connected by road only in the summer. Alaska Power & Telephone provides service to some 200 customers in Eagle with diesel-fired turbines, providing around 70 kilowatts in the summer, and more than double that in the winter.

The hydrokinetic turbine would provide 100 kilowatts of power during the summer. The utility doesn’t believe the turbine could work in the winter when ice slows the river. The Yukon typically freezes at Eagle in October and doesn’t start to break up until April.

The goal for the first three years of the project will be to test how the technology will work in Alaska, including operations and maintenance costs and environmental impacts.

But if the pilot project works, and the technology can be standardized, Alaska Power & Telephone hopes to replicate the project in other rural communities along river ways, including some spots where the technology might be able to work year round.

“We’re hoping that the technology will be perfected and be in pretty good shape by the end of that project,” Grimm said.

HGE planning 11 projects

The company is poised to become the first in the country to put a hydrokinetic pilot project of its kind into commercial application with a 200-kilowatt system in Hastings, Minn. scheduled to start providing power before the end of November.

Over the course of 2008, Hydro Green Energy has received 12 preliminary FERC permits to study hydrokinetic projects around Alaska. The company dropped one permit this year.

The 11 projects moving forward cover the state, including six on the Yukon, two on the Kobuk River, one on the Kuskokwim River and another along Inian Pass in Southeast.

Hydro Green Energy plans to use this winter to learn about those rivers, and to figure out if there is a way to use hydrokinetic technology year round in Alaska. The company toured the state this summer, and is considering setting up a local office.

Hydro Green Energy is partnering with the city of Galena to apply for a grant from the Renewable Energy Fund, which entered its second round recently.

“We’ve really wanted to use the project in Minnesota as a stepping stone, if you will, for our development in Alaska,” Stover said.

Hydro Green Energy hopes the Hastings project will not only earn a small amount of revenue to finally offset years of development costs, but also yield the first real-world data set on hydrokinetic technologies, allowing Hydro Green Energy to have an easier time getting financing and permitting on future projects, like those in Alaska.

“It’s a long road,” Stover said.

ORPC expanding portfolio

The Massachusetts-based startup with offices in Maine, Florida and Alaska began pursuing a tidal power project in Cook Inlet in 2006. If constructed, the project would generate electricity from the powerful currents in the waterway surrounding the population center of Alaska, as well as the base for significant oil and gas operations.

Earlier this summer, working as ORPC Alaska, the company received a preliminary FERC permit to study a hydrokinetic project on the Tanana River in Nenana, a small community some 50 miles south of Fairbanks on the Parks Highway.

In the company’s application with FERC, it describes a phased project to test a turbine system developed in conjunction with a division of the U.S. Navy.

The first phase would start next year and include “pre-commercialization” testing and construction of a prototype unit. ORPC Alaska said the first phase of the project should cost between $300,000 and $700,000.

The second phase would involve a one-year test of the technology to fix any engineering flaws and indentify environmental impacts. The third phase would install between four and 16 turbines to generate between 100 and 400 kilowatts of electricity to be connected, in theory, to the Golden Valley Electric Association grid through a new transmission line.

Tidal projects continue

Earlier this fall, the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative, which provides electricity for 53 villages across the state, applied for a preliminary FERC permit to study a hydrokinetic project in Port Clarence, north of Nome.

The utility plans to spend around $100,000 next year gathering engineering and environmental information about the area. As currently proposed, the project would generate 300 kilowatts of electricity from tidal currents to serve communities in the area.

Low-impact hydro on Kenai

Kenai Hydro LLC, a partnership between Homer Electric Association and the private company Wind Energy Alaska, is studying four “low-impact” hydro projects at Crescent Lake, Falls Creek, Ptarmigan Lake and Grant Lake on the eastern Kenai Peninsula.

Homer Electric currently buys electricity from Chugach Electric Association, a major power cooperative serving Anchorage. But Homer Electric recently announced it would allow the contract to expire in 2013 and generate its own electricity from new sources.

The small utility received $200,000 from the first round of the Renewable Energy Fund grants issue this past summer, and received preliminary FERC permits in October, giving the company three years to study the four lakes near Moose Pass.

As proposed, the four projects would cost between $15.5 million and $19 million each, and would produce around 22 megawatts of power combined, helping to offset demand.

Homer Electric is promoting the projects as far different than traditional hydroelectricity, saying in some cases water could simply be diverted rather than dammed, but the utility is already facing early opposition. A group called Friends of Cooper Landing is challenging the Crescent Lake Project, calling it a “high impact proposal.”

—Eric Lidji