Maine-based ORPC Inc., a developer of clean, renewable power systems that harness energy from free-flowing rivers and tidal currents, has submitted a preliminary permit application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in hopes of installing a tidal energy project at East Foreland, near Nikiski in the Cook Inlet. Once the project is functioning, ORPC will collaborate with Homer Electric Association to sell it the tidal energy produced.
Keriann Baker, Director of Member Relations for Homer Electric Association spoke with KSRM saying that this project has been in the works for awhile, “HEA’s position is really simple. We think renewable sources of energy are going to expand. We’re planning on accommodating the expansion. Right now, we’ve got most of our energy to generate our system from one vendor. That’s natural gas. From a business perspective, it’s just not really a great idea to be so reliant on one vendor. Our perspective is that we’d like to see a lot of people getting into the renewable and other energy so that, for HEA, it’s good because we can buy from more than one person because what happens is when your supplier is doing well, you’re doing really well. But when the cost goes up and there’s no one else to buy from, we’re all saddled with those kind of costs. For the average energy consumer here on the Kenai, having some diversity of vendors to purchase our supply from is a great thing.”
ORPC intends to develop a 5 MW pilot project near East Foreland to verify the technical performance and environmental compatibility of its proposed marine energy devices. The results will assist in planning a phased build-out of up to 100 MW commercial-scale project.
Baker gave a timeline of when this project is expected to go live, “HEA will be ready this fall because we’ve got our BESS energy project, which is basically a series of giant batteries. Sometime this fall, we will have the batteries delivered. Once that project goes live and we have the ability to store energy for a longer capacity of time, we’ll be ready to take any kind of sources that are ready. The supplier may not be ready for us, but we will certainly be ready for them.”
Homer Electric says that marine energy could create 680,000 jobs and save 500 million tons of CO2 emissions globally, according to the International Energy Agency, and the U.S. Department of Energy considers development of marine energy resources a domestic priority.