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ORPC plans Cook Inlet tidal energy pilot Company wants to install four turbines north of Fire Island in 2011 to test its concept for harnessing the inlet’s huge tidal range Alan Bailey Petroleum News
In the latest step in its initiative to harness the swiftly moving tidal currents that sweep up and down Alaska’s Cook Inlet, renewable energy firm Ocean Renewable Power Co. has applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a license for a pilot tidal power system. In the summer or fall of 2011 the company wants to install four 250-kilowatt turbine generators, attached to the seafloor a mile or so north of Fire Island, offshore Anchorage. The plan is to hook the combined 1-megawatt capacity of these generators into an electricity grid intertie that Cook Inlet Region Inc. plans to build on Fire Island as part of a wind farm development on the island.
Once the initial pilot system is in operation, ORPC anticipates making a couple of upgrades, adding four 500-kilowatt floating turbines in 2012, and two more of these larger turbines in 2013. So, if all goes according to plan, the eventual generating capacity would be 5 megawatts, Hauser said.
Monty Worthington, director of project development for ORPC Alaska, also told Petroleum News Feb. 4 that a couple of oil companies operating in the Cook Inlet have approached ORPC, asking about the possibility of installing in-current turbines to provide tidal power for Cook Inlet offshore oil platforms.
“We’re looking into developing a product that would … fix potentially to an oil platform or mount alongside on the bottom,” Worthington said.
Underwater windmills In-current turbines of the type that ORPC plans to try using in Cook Inlet sit passively in a tidal or river current rather like underwater windmills, driving electrical generators without the need for any form of dam structure. The technology is still somewhat in its infancy, with several companies moving toward commercial deployment of tidal and river current systems.
One company, Little Susitna Construction Co., has proposed a very large tidal power system near Anchorage, involving tidal fence structures across Turnagain Arm, the sea inlet that extends east from the northern end of the Cook Inlet.
Field studies ORPC has moved ahead with its project by conducting several pre-deployment field studies, including a fish survey and a survey of beluga whale activity near the project site. Beluga whales are a particular concern because they are listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Worthington said that it has picked the Fire Island site as an area that is not heavily used by belugas. In fact, ORPC had originally proposed installing a pilot tidal power system in nearby Knik Arm, where tidal currents are particularly strong. However, the National Marine Fisheries Service advised the company not to conduct its pilot project there because beluga whales regularly migrate through the Arm during the fall, Worthington said. However, ORPC may revisit the Knik Arm tidal power concept in the future, after using the Fire Island project to better understand any environmental impacts the in-current generators might have, he said.
LGL Alaska Research Associates, a firm that is engaged in multiyear research on Cook Inlet beluga whales, conducted the ORPC beluga whale survey between June and November 2009 and did not observe any beluga whales in the area of the proposed tidal power pilot system during the entire period of the survey. On one occasion the researchers saw a group of 15 to 20 belugas in the channel between Fire Island and Anchorage.
ORPC also collected acoustic data from the project area in 2009. The company plans to collect ambient sound data, starting in 2010 and continuing through the period of project deployment, as part of a U.S. Department of Energy funded study of interactions between beluga whales and the tidal power project, Hauser said.
In late 2010 ORPC plans to test pre-commercial versions of the devices it has earmarked for its Cook Inlet project. Those tests will take place in Eastport, Maine, and will furnish data helpful in further assessing the potential environmental impacts of the Cook Inlet system, Hauser said.
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