SBIR-STTR Award

There is a worldwide, nearly insatiable demand for renewable energy and a dramatic shift away from central power grids to smaller, more secure, robust and reliable grids powered by renewable energy. ORPC estimates the total addressable global market for marine hydrokinetics is 433 gigawatts (GW), and ORPC has taken a leadership position in the early adopter, high cost islanded community market in North America. This 1.5 GW market obtains electricity from diesel generation at $0.30 to $1.30/kWh, with substantial noise, environmental, and emissions issues. ORPC will develop scalable applications of marine renewable energy as a baseload power source to completely replace diesel generators for 100 percent renewable microgrid operations. ORPC will work with the City of False Pass, Alaska, to plan the deployment of a microgrid system using ORPC power systems as baseload generation. False Pass is situated near a significant hydrokinetic tidal resource at the Isanotski Straight that offers a potential to considerably reduce, or eliminate, the use of diesel fuel and provide locally sourced energy. The average residential expenditure for home energy is 350 percent of the national average, and like most communities of the Aleutian Islands, relies completely on diesel fuel to meet electricity and heating needs. The remote location of the community combined with the volatility of fuel prices leaves False Pass vulnerable to fuel shortages and high energy costs. ORPC will demonstrate the economic viability of a microgrid marine renewable energy system for community-scale tidal power systems like those found in False Pass. A model of the grid system with multiple implementations of additional storage elements including pumped storage and battery storage will be developed to assess the ability of different generating technologies and storage approaches to provide robust, reliable electrical and thermal energy to light industrial, commercial and residential customers on the False Pass utility grid. The study will evaluate the energy balance of the full grid over a one-year period.Demonstration of the marine renewable energy microgrid will facilitate market entry for supporting distributed energy resources in grid-tied, domestic markets, which are increasingly being recognized as essential components of the electricity grid of the future and are expected to supplement or replace large central power generation projects at a global scale.

There is a worldwide, nearly insatiable demand for renewable energy and a dramatic shift away from central power grids to smaller, more secure, robust and reliable grids powered by renewable energy. In North America there is a 1.5 GW market that obtains electricity from diesel generation at $0.30 to $1.30/kWh, with substantial noise, environmental, and emissions issues. Ocean Renewable Power Company, Inc. (ORPC) seeks to develop scalable applications of marine renewable energy (MRE) as a baseload power source for 100 percent renewable microgrid operations. ORPC will work with the City of False Pass, Alaska, to plan the deployment of a microgrid system using ORPC power systems as baseload generation. False Pass is situated near a premier tidal energy resource that offers a potential to considerably reduce the use of diesel fuel and provide locally sourced energy. For the Phase I effort ORPC (1) demonstrated the economic and technical viability of a robust, reliable microgrid for the City of False Pass, Alaska, with baseload load generation provided by a tidal power system, and (2) selected the components necessary to deliver the microgrid, including the particular specifics of the tidal power system, size and nature of the energy storage components required, particular power electronics required for grid following and grid forming operations, and identified several different centralized or decentralized microgrid controls approaches which are most appropriate for these systems. The Phase II technical approach will finalize the selection and design of an energy storage system, grid forming inverters, and a microgrid controller suitable for connection with an ORPC MRE power system on the False Pass grid. Acquisition of equipment and testing of the microgrid system in a laboratory environment is planned in the Phase II effort, before delivering, installing and testing the microgrid system on the False Pass grid for at least a six-month test. In conjunction with this work, ORPC will continue to assess the tidal resource, monitor and model existing grid operations, and develop plans for installation of an ORPC Power System in Isanotski strait. As a first-of-a-kind project utilizing tidal energy to offset diesel fuel use on an Alaskan microgrid, this Project has replicability for other communities in Alaska and worldwide. The technical proof of concept will further the state of the art for microgrids, providing a generation profile complimentary to the other renewable resources, enhancing grid resilience and reliability. These attributes are applicable to microgrids within the larger utility grids of the 48 contiguous states and will help provide distributed and robust power generation, which improves the security and reliability of the national grid.