Grant to push power study

PALMER — The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced this week that a grant application submitted through its local office has landed an Anchorage firm $50,000.

Pulse Tidal LLC will use the money to study whether it’s economically feasible to put a hydrokinetic tidal power generator at the base of an offshore drilling platform in Cook Inlet.

The inlet, home to the second highest tidal range in the world, has been an area of interest for tidal power concerns for some time. Pulse wouldn’t be the first to test those waters — Ocean Renewable Power Co. already has a test generator there, according to Chad Stovall at the USDA’s Palmer office, who helped coordinate Pulse’s grant.

Stovall said he’s also heard there was a tidal project receiving funding in Homer.

The USDA program — dubbed the Rural Energy for America Program — offers grants of either $50,000 or 25 percent of the project’s costs, Stovall said. In Pulse’s case, the feasibility study will cost $500,000.

“Anything you get working in hydrokinetic is going to be expensive,” Stovall said.

Tidal power was for a number of years envisioned as large-scale projects building generators that resembled bridges. Hydrokinetic generators, by contrast, resemble nothing so much as wind turbines, though they are hardy turbines built to withstand marine conditions with water rather than wind turning the blades.

Stovall said this isn’t the first time the program has brought money to Alaska.

“We’ve done I think over 30 projects now in the state, a variety of hydro, of wind, a lot of energy efficiency, which is really starting to dominate the program because there’s such a quick turnaround,” Stovall said.

The USDA encourages those energy efficiency projects because they tend to seal up cracks in buildings and make follow-up environmentally friendly energy generation projects that much more attractive.

“It’s kind of a no-brainer, so really they’re starting to run the table,” he said. “There’s no reason to blow clean energy through the windows and under the walls.”

As for Pulse’s project, he said the site under consideration is in the southern portion of Cook Inlet. Restrictions on USDA funding don’t permit these projects near the Municipality of Anchorage.

He said it’s anybody’s guess what the feasibility study will find.

“It’s not an easy technology to develop. There was only one commercial developer of renewable hydrokinetic technology, it was in Scotland and I think they hit a snag,” Stovall said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.