Courtesy / ORPC
ORPC Chairman, Co-Founder and CEO Chris Sauer, right, and ORPC President and COO John Ferland, left, greet Gov. Janet Mills at Wednesday launch of the company’s full-scale RivGen power system at Brunswick Landing.
April 18, 2019
ORPC unveils world's first commercial river-power generation system
Courtesy / ORPC
The ORPC team stands in front of the RivGen device just prior to Wednesday’s RivGen Commercial Product Launch at Brunswick Landing.
By James McCarthy
ORPC is the only company worldwide to have built, operated and delivered power to a utility grid from a pilot renewable tidal energy project in Eastport and to a remote community grid from the renewable river project at Igiugig.
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Portland-based ORPC Inc. unveiled its first commercial river-power-generation system Wednesday in a public launch ceremony attended by Gov. Janet Mills and 150 people at Brunswick Landing.
The company’s RivGen Power System has been under development for several years with a prototype system that was successfully deployed at the remote Alaskan village of Igiugig in 2014 and 2015. As reported by Mainebiz in March 2016, the company received $1.54 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to advance the commercialization of its RivGen Power System technology following those successful pilot tests in Alaska.
Attendees, including Gov. Mills, received a personal tour of the device at Wednesday’s unveiling led by ORPC engineers who explained the various sub-components of the marine renewable energy system.
The RivGen device will be shipped to Igiugig, Alaska, for installation and operation in the Kvichak River this summer to provide electricity to the remote community, offsetting its diesel fuel use by up to 50% and moving it closer to using diesel fuel for emergency-backup only. The Alaskan village, which is located 275 miles southwest of Anchorage, was seen as a test of RivGen’s ability to reduce and stabilize the cost of power in remote communities near rivers and tidal estuaries that currently use diesel fuel for power generation.
In comments reported by Mainebiz in March 2016, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, characterized the Igiugig project as a significant testing ground of a marine power device that she said “could well be utilized in dozens of river villages statewide to reduce the high cost of power” — which, in the case of Igiugig has been as high as 80 cents per kilowatt hour diesel-generated power.
"This truly could be the path to bringing affordable electricity to many rural villages, if the efficiencies and the durability being pioneered in Igiugig can be replicated statewide," she said.
Mills cited ORPC’s efforts to create the river-generation power device as “a shining example of how we can harness innovation to grow our economy and create a clean, sustainable energy future.
“I am proud of ORPC’s continued exploration and growth and look forward to the leaps and bounds they achieve in markets around the world and here at home in Maine,” she said in a statement.
Scaling up to commercialization
ORPC recently achieved more than $500,000 raised from a growth capital offering in progress via Netcapital, an SEC-approved equity funding portal.
Chris Sauer, ORPC’s chairman, co-founder and CEO, said the company sees the deployment of the full-scale RivGen power system in Igiugig as a significant milestone.
“ORPC’s RivGen Power System is the future of sustainability for 2 billion people mostly indigenous people around the world, 700 million of whom who currently rely on diesel fuel to power their homes,” he said in a news release. “ORPC provides a marine renewable energy solution that combines our patented power systems with smart grid electronics and energy storage to build the no-carbon microgrids of the future.”
ORPC President and COO John Ferland said Maine talent and workmanship has been integral to all of ORPC’s work, noting 280 partners, contractors and service providers from 14 of the state’s 16 counties have participated in helping to create ORPC’s innovative river-and-ocean-power technology.
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