Ocean Renewable

Ocean’s Electric
A Maine company dives underwater to fuel the next generation of hydro power. 

More than 115 billion tons of water flows in and out of the Bay of Fundy every tide, forming dramatic waves and whirlpools as the water rises and falls 50 feet every 12 hours. On the west end of the Bay sits the easternmost village in the United States, Eastport. A beautiful but economically depressed area, Eastport relies on a handful of industries and small businesses to survive: lobstering, a mustard mill, and a wooden–boat making facility. Under the water, however, lies cutting-edge technology designed to harness the tides. If it succeeds, Washington County could become one of the first regions in the country powered by inexhaustible, emission-free electricity generated from the ocean. “I feel like the Wright brothers in 1902,” says Christopher Sauer, chief executive of Ocean Renewable Power, a company that uses portable turbines to tap into Fundy’s tides. “Of course, their first flight was in 1903.”

Ocean Renewable’s Portland, Maine, headquarters is a modest four-room setup in a low-tech office building beside a fish market. If the digs seem unassuming, so does the technology that Sauer and his partners work on inside. Ocean Renewable relies on a simple process to power its generators: The flow of the tides moves a series of propellers submerged in the ocean. The propellers then turn the generators and produce electricity. The World Energy Council, a global research group, estimates that all of the power generated from the ocean equates to more than 5,000 times the current global demand. “Combine tidal power with wind and biomass energy,” the Sauer says, “and you can see New England, the Pacific Northwest, and Alaska being largely run on renewable energy.” That day may be far off on the horizon, but the bushy haired Sauer isn’t some eco-idealist—he’s spent the bulk of his career making more traditional energy projects come to fruition. He expects to meet more realistic goals in the immediate future. In 2009, a permanent Ocean Renewable Power turbine will generate 250 kilowatts in Eastport, with another in Alaska’s Cook Inlet to follow by 2011.

Like flight, the idea of producing electricity from the ocean seems simple in theory but often proves difficult to execute. Companies have tried to develop ocean power since the energy shocks of the 1970s. Early initiatives focused on converting the ocean’s thermal heat into energy, but lacked funding and public interest. Only with the price of oil soaring 350 percent in the past six years has the technology and funding caught up to the possibilities the ocean presents.
Ocean Renewable Power isn’t the only start-up making a splash. Verdant Power, a New York-based company, tested machines that resembled wind turbines in the East River last year. The company will also evaluate revised models of the turbines in Quebec’s Saint Lawrence River this year. An Irish firm, OpenHydro, runs a 250-kilowatt tidal prototype built like a 15-foot-high jet engine off the coast of Scotland. To tap wave power, New Jersey-based Ocean Power Technologies has developed a large buoy that generates electricity through the oscillation of interior machinery as the waves roll by.

Ocean Renewable’s approach uses a long turbine of cross-flow aqua foils that look like what you would find on a push lawnmower. The novel blade design allows them to move in the same direction regardless of which way the water flows, eliminating the need to rotate the turbine. Two sets of blades then get fastened to the axle on either side of the waterproof generator, making the turbine one large moving part. The whole thing gets tethered to the ocean bottom, so it floats between the surface and the floor. In peak conditions when the water flow reaches six knots (that’s almost seven m.p.h.), the 10-foot high by 78-foot-long turbine sends 250 kilowatts into the grid. In addition to emission-free electricity, Sauer estimates the company will be able to produce electricity at 10 cents per kilowatt-hour—comparable to the cost of wind and solar. For consumers in rural Alaska, where diesel-generated electricity runs as high as $1 per kilowatt-hour, such a system could be a tremendous boon. “We have the opportunity to be the first entrant in the marketplace,” says John Ferland, who heads the company’s project development arm in the Northeast. A Maine native previously more concerned with generating jobs in depressed down east towns as head of a start-up incubator, the reedy Ferland is thriving on being able to both place jobs in the Pine Tree state while furthering his own career with Ocean Renewable. 

Gathering energy from the flow of water is nothing new. Mills commonly used riverflow to turn machinery for centuries, followed by the vastly more powerful hydroelectric dams. The Grand Coulee in Washington State, completed in 1942, generates nearly 7 million kilowatts. But the day of such massive public works projects has ended. Hydroelectric dams require that the land behind them be cleared for lakes, impeding river travel and affecting fish migration. Recently, between 20 and 50 U.S. dams a year have been removed, and there are currently no ongoing hydroelectric dam projects in North America or Europe.
When fossil fuels cost less, only diehards kept the idea of ocean power alive. One of these people, a Florida native named Paul Wells, developed an idea for using turbines with 250-foot-long arms that would sit in the Gulf Stream. Wells had little experience, so he hired energy veteran Sauer and Maine tech start-up expert Ferland in 2008 to develop his idea. “We didn’t want to invent our own technology,” explains Sauer. “We thought, Let’s just go out and see if we can buy a package of equipment and develop power projects. But we found no one else had what we needed.”

That lack of technology would have doomed most companies, but Ocean Renewable saw hope. For decades, the Navy has tinkered with ocean power, seeking a way to independently power its bases. Sauer heard the Navy would provide experts as consultants if they felt a technology was in their best interest. Soon they were dealing with some of the nearly 4,000 engineers and scientists employed by the Navy Surface Warfare division in Carderock, Maryland. The Navy quickly pointed out the design flaws: propeller-like turbines have lots of moving parts that are already prone to failure in wind applications. The saltwater environment would wreak even greater havoc. Plus, the vibrations inherent in propellers would be accentuated by the giant blade size, leading to poor efficiency and higher likelihood of failure. The Navy suggested a magnet generator similar to that used in computer hard drives to better convert electricity from the turbines to the grid.

While the Navy pointed Sauer and Ferland in new directions, they were limited in how much they could help. The Pentagon earns the right to co-own the technology if the military stays involved for too long. So the pair called an end to the Naval consulting and invested their own money in the company, later tapping friends, family and such angel investment funds as Quercus Trust to raise the $3.6 million they needed.

Even with a major boost in funding, the company still keeps its expenses under control. With Sauer constantly taking the bus two hours south to Boston to meet with investors and Ferland driving four hours north to supervise in Eastport, the men haven’t even found the time to hang anything on the beige walls. The firm’s other 18 employees are mostly part-timers scattered across eight states, from a state-sponsored research center in Massachusetts to Minnesota, where the generators are designed. “We’re having our first company-wide meeting soon,” Sauer says.

Getting employees familiar with each other isn’t Sauer’s only challenge. His biggest hurdle involves getting average consumers comfortable with the idea of the turbines. In Eastport, eager for jobs and more understanding about sealife, that’s been easier than it will be going forward, as environmentalists voice worries over the impact on fish and whales. Ferland says he hasn’t seen signs of any fish getting caught in the turbines. The second concern comes from ship captains, who worry about hitting the turbines. That’s why Ocean Renewable anchors turbines as much as 65 feet below the surface, out of the way of even the largest ships. The only worry in securing future sites, then, could be opposition from urchin, scallop, and lobster fishermen, who would have to surrender some ocean bottom to make room for the turbines. But Ferland says that discussions have gone well and they have so far avoided conflicts.  

With oil having doubled in the past year and some 85 percent of Americans in favor of boosting renewable energy resources, Sauer expects to get around even the most serious hurdles. The biggest challenge he sees will be finding a way to beat their competitors to the open market—a challenge that starts on the open water. 

Brendan Coffey is a freelance writer based in Massachusetts.

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