Reducing the levelized cost of electricity for river hydrokinetic turbines

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With Canada having identified 100 GW of river hydrokinetic potential (rivaling Canada's current total nameplate electrical generating capacity), the proposed collaborative marine research with New Energy will contribute to the realization of economic opportunities inherent to our renewable energy resources. Marine energy technology provides base load generation, providing opportunities to displace diesel generation. The University of Manitoba established the Canadian Hydrokinetic Turbine testing Centre (CHTTC) and collaborates with Canadian marine companies, like New Energy, that develop hydrokinetic turbines at the distributed scale. The CHTTC assists Canadian companies to increase their market share in the expanding global supply chain by supporting commercialization of marine water-to-wire turbine technology. New Energy designs and develops river and tidal marine turbines for distributed generation power markets worldwide. The proposed Collaborative Research and Development project will investigate ways to improve the application of distributed generation in communities using hydrokinetic technologies, focusing mainly on river applications. The objective is to improve methods and procedures to reduce the overall levelized cost of energy for deploying and operating hydrokinetic turbines worldwide. Research will be on investigating new approaches to simplify how to install and operate this technology, decrease the weight of components that must be shipped to remote locations, and reduce system complexities. Focus will be on decreasing operator requirements by eliminating difficult on-water procedures, simplifying operator training and workplace safety procedures, and considerably reducing on-water safety risks.