Biomimicry-based MHK for remote communities

Microgrids are essential for developing, sustaining and growing Remote Communities which have been historically powered by diesel generation for reliability. Renewable energy sources, primarily sun and wind, have been gaining strength in offering local and economical alternatives of power to remote microgrid. Nonetheless, their intermittency brings reliability at high storage costs and as typically grid-following technologies, they are vulnerable to extreme weather events if the grid-forming backbone collapses. Marine hydrokinetic energy (MHK) offers immense potential to be a baseload source to the renewable energy mix in a remote community microgrid, but existing MHK technologies are capital intensive, bulky and difficult to deploy and decommission, subject to debris and extreme weather and as a result, offer an alternative energy at a high cost per kWh unless it is scaled to a size that only amplifies the capital cost and operation challenges. In Phase I the team will perform the following activities: 1) Based on a selected shortlist of 3-5 Alaskan Villages, the team will perform site Identification & assessment to identify an Alaskan village that will serve as the reference site for detailed analysis and preparation for a microgrid implementation; 2) Once the top site has been selected, the team will more closely model the most advantageous microgrid configurations; 3) Based on the resource mix assessment, three hydrokinetic array integration and control configurations will be selected for further analysis; 4) As the three array configurations develop, an economic & SWOT analysis will be applied to guide the technical effort moving forward to Phase II. In Phase II, once the best performing microgrid configuration is selected, the steps required to test and implement all components will begin in preparation of Phase II. The main components will be known at this point but will be arranged in a Bill of Materials (BOM) with estimated costs and quantities. Quotes for any component estimated > $100kW will be requested and attached to the BOM. Lastly, the plan to procure, test and implement all components into a BladeRunner-centric microgrid will be described in detail. Through this proposal the BladeRunner Energy team is moving towards proving the feasibility of a remote community microgrid driven by a distinct approach towards a marine hydrokinetic technology solution, which is smaller-scale in order to open resource availability and provide ease of deployment, integrates a biomimicry-based rotor with debris- and fish-friendly characteristics, is intended for array deployment that will offer resiliency, and can offer a means to become affordable to many remote communities near a body of flowing water.