Ocean Renewable Power Company
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Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC, Inc.) is a
marine renewable energy Marine energy or marine power (also sometimes referred to as ocean energy, ocean power, or marine and hydrokinetic energy) refers to the energy carried by ocean waves, tides, salinity, and ocean temperature differences. The movement of water in ...
company based in
Portland, Maine Portland is the largest city in the U.S. state of Maine and the seat of Cumberland County. Portland's population was 68,408 in April 2020. The Greater Portland metropolitan area is home to over half a million people, the 104th-largest metropol ...
. The company develops technologies which generate electricity from tidal, river, and ocean currents. The turbines are a cross-flow design in the helix shape of DNA with the axis of rotation perpendicular to the flow of water and work on the same principle as water wheels. As water flows, the turbine foils spin in the same direction, producing mechanical power that a permanent magnet generator converts to electricity, and then sends to the electrical grid via an underwater power cable and onshore power station. The TidGen® Power System (for tidal currents) and RivGen® Power System (for river and shallow tidal currents) are the company's trademarked systems.


History

The genesis of ORPC began in 2004, when a cruise ship industry executive,
Paul Wells Paul Wells is a Canadian journalist and pundit. He was briefly a national affairs columnist for the ''Toronto Star'' in 2016–2017. Before that, he was a columnist for ''Maclean's'' for thirteen years; his column originally appeared in the bac ...
, queried whether there was a way to generate electricity from ocean currents like the
Gulf Stream The Gulf Stream, together with its northern extension the North Atlantic Current, North Atlantic Drift, is a warm and swift Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic ocean current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico and flows through the Straits of Florida a ...
. He teamed up with two others, a structural engineer, Christopher R. Sauer, and a third co-founder with a financial background. In 2007, with input from the
U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage o ...
, ORPC launched a 46 ft long, horizontal cross-flow turbine prototype in
Cobscook Bay Cobscook Bay is located in Washington County in the state of Maine. It opens into Passamaquoddy Bay, within the Bay of Fundy. Cobscook Bay is immediately south of the island city of Eastport, the main island of which (Moose Island) straddles the ...
, Maine, which proved technically feasible. In 2010, the company's 60-kilowatt tidal turbine began providing grid-compatible electricity to the
Eastport, Maine Eastport is a city and archipelago in Washington County, Maine, United States. The population was 1,288 at the 2020 census, making Eastport the least-populous city in Maine. The principal island is Moose Island, which is connected to the mainla ...
,
U.S. Coast Guard The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and law enforcement service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's eight uniformed services. The service is a maritime, military, mul ...
station's utility boat. ORPC pursued and won the first contract with the Maine Public Utilities Commission to provide up to 5 megawatts of tidal power in April 2012. ORPC will receive 21.5 cents per kilowatt-hour produced, which is higher than the fluctuating price paid to producers on the open electricity market. They determined that the economic benefits that would accrue to the state would be a factor of 1.8, meaning more money would be returned to the Maine economy through jobs and taxes than was being invested in the higher rate paid. Maine's state senate president, Kevin Raye, described the deal as a major milestone "in the 80-year effort to commercially harness the vast power of the tides”. The company installed an underwater turbine to use tidal currents to generate renewable energy. The unit was installed on the ocean floor at the company's
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is the United States federal agency that regulates the transmission and wholesale sale of electricity and natural gas in interstate commerce and regulates the transportation of oil by pipeline in ...
-licensed Cobscook Bay project site, in Eastport and
Lubec Lubec ( ) is a town in Washington County, Maine, United States. It is the easternmost municipality in the contiguous U.S. (see extreme points of the United States) and is the country's closest continental location to Africa. The town, with a p ...
, Maine. The project transmitted the first electricity ever delivered to a utility-scale grid from an ocean resource in North or South America in September 2012. A $21 million project, the Cobscook Bay Project was funded almost equally between private and public sources, with the United States Department of Energy providing a $10 million research grant. The project produced enough electricity for 25 homes. Said Jose Zayas, director of the Wind and Water Power Technologies Office at the Department of Energy, "These first pioneering projects are complicated (and) really breaking new ground." Said Paul Jacobson, an ocean energy expert at the Palo Alto, Calif.-based
Electric Power Research Institute EPRI, is an American independent, nonprofit organization that conducts research and development related to the generation, delivery, and use of electricity to help address challenges in the energy industry, including reliability, efficiency, affor ...
. "With this project, these tidal power devices have finally crossed the threshold into commercial development." "The project, which injected $14 million into the local economy and has supported more than 100 local and supply chain jobs, represents the first tidal energy project in the United States with long-term contracts to sell electricity." Starting in 2013, ORPC submitted annual environmental monitoring reports for the Cobscook Bay Tidal Energy Project to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission with findings from acoustic, marine mammal and fish species studies along with other environmental impacts, which the company indicated had no adverse impact on the marine environment of Cobscook Bay." ORPC is developing the autonomous turbine generator unit (ATGU), a roving subsea power generation module capable of self-propelling, self-deploying and retrieving, and providing a power supply to subsea vehicles and monitoring systems, and performing underwater missions such as heavy lifts, inspections, and robotic operations. This project is supported by the US Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) program. Founder and CEO Christopher R. Sauer retired in 2020, after 16 years of service to the company. Stuart Davies now leads the company as CEO. ORPC has expanded its operations globally, establishing three subsidiaries: ORPC
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
(
Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...
, 2015), ORPC
Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
LLC (
Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...
, 2015), and ORPC
Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...
SpA (
Punta Arenas Punta Arenas (; historically Sandy Point in English) is the capital city of Chile's southernmost region, Magallanes and Antarctica Chilena. The city was officially renamed as Magallanes in 1927, but in 1938 it was changed back to "Punta Aren ...
, 2021).


Recognition

Along with 17 other high-tech small businesses and 3 individuals, ORPC received a
Tibbetts Award The Tibbetts Award ("Tibbie") is a national award made annually to those small firms, projects, organizations, and individuals judged to exemplify the very best in Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) achievement. The award was established ...
from the
U.S. Small Business Administration The United States Small Business Administration (SBA) is an independent agency of the United States government that provides support to entrepreneurs and small businesses. The mission of the Small Business Administration is "to maintain and stre ...
in Washington, D.C., in May 2013. The award honors companies and individuals nationwide, "who are beacons of promise and models of excellence in high technology." ORPC was the first marine renewable company to receive the Outstanding Stewards of America's Waters Award for Operational Excellence from the
National Hydropower Association The National Hydropower Association (NHA) represents the interests of the U.S. hydropower industry, which includes all forms of water energy—conventional, hydrokinetic, tidal and ocean. Since 1983, NHA has represented the majority of domestic, no ...
in 2016. In September 2020, Stuart Davies provided public testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources Full Committee Hearing on Offshore Energy Technologies. ORPC was honored as Innovator of the Year by the Maine International Trade Center in May 2021.
U.S. Secretary of Energy The United States secretary of energy is the head of the United States Department of Energy, a member of the Cabinet of the United States, and fifteenth in the presidential line of succession. The position was created on October 1, 1977, when Pr ...
Jennifer Granholm Jennifer Mulhern Granholm (born February 5, 1959) is a Canadian-American lawyer, educator, author, political commentator, and politician serving as the 16th United States secretary of energy since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, she pre ...
and
U.S. Senator The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and powe ...
Angus King Angus Stanley King Jr. (born March 31, 1944) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Maine since 2013. A political independent since 1993, he previously served as the 72nd governor of Maine from 1995 ...
visited ORPC headquarters in September 2021.


RivGen® Power System Development

In 2014, ORPC built and operated its RivGen Power System, the Company’s first river energy project, delivering power to the remote Alaskan village of Igiugig. An updated RivGen Power System was re-installed and operated in Igiugig in 2015 to demonstrate its latest technology advancements and provided one-third of the community’s electricity needs, significantly offsetting their diesel fuel use. In July 2019, ORPC deployed its commercial RivGen 2.0 Power System and connected it to the Igiugig community microgrid, generating 35 kW at this site.


References

{{Reflist


External links


Ocean Renewal Power Company website

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Renewable energy companies of the United States Companies based in Maine