**Title**: Energy in the North - Moriel Arango
**Date**: December 18, 2024
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Moriel Arango

00;00;01;01 - 00;00;04;26 [Moriel Arango] The tree came down, snuck underneath the barge, got to our system, went underneath the housing mechanism where we have our generate or above water. It then lifted up the torque rope, got to the rotor, and the rotor basically jumped over the log and continued operating.

00;00;19;08 - 00;00;27;11 [Amanda Byrd] This week on Energy in the North, I speak with Moriel Arango, the chief executive Officer and the chief technology officer for BladeRunner Energy, a company that's been dedicated to developing a hydrokinetic energy device to harness the power of naturally flowing water. Moriel has been working with a marine energy team testing his device at the Tanana River Test site near Nenana. And this past summer I asked him where they are now in the development of the turbine technology.

00;00;46;28 - 00;00;52;24 [Moriel Arango] We are now almost four years into an ARPA-E project that has really been pivotal in us to develop this technology and this partnership with UAF. And
 we're coming to the end of the R&D phase and hopefully stepping into more of a pilot project demonstration. And from there leading into commercialization of this technology.

00;01;09;11 - 00;01;13;25 [Amanda Byrd] Part of your R&D has been developing new blades

00;01;13;25 - 00;01;15;24 [Moriel Arango] This whole thing started back about seven years ago with funding from the National Science Foundation. The idea was to keep this hydrokinetic device small so it could be easily transported to these remote riverine areas. We started with a rotor diameter that was roughly 50 centimeters. We started to grow the size of the device that forced us to have to go through this iterative approach so we could optimize the blades. So we've now grown the diameter of the rotor up to two meters. And we've been holding on to this pretty unique shape to the leading edge of the blades that was all been driven by desire to be able to
 easily mitigate debris that is found in these wild rivers. So that in itself is pretty different from most other horizontal axis hydrokinetic devices or even wind turbines, you could say. And that has been a pretty big focus on the BladeRunner Energy side is how to take this spiral leading edge and be able to achieve the high efficiencies that you find in more conventional blades. We're talking about, upwards of 40% efficiency is kind of the standard for more conventional, straight leading edge blades so we've learned that our unique blade topology actually can achieve those efficiencies, also doing so at these smaller diameters.

00;02;41;22 - 00;02;43;08 [Amanda Byrd] You mentioned the debris. I've seen whole trees come down this river and your system has a unique way to just move out of the way.

00;02;51;20 - 00;02;54;28 [Moriel Arango] We use a flexible torque rope to transfer the power
 from the rotor up to the generator. And that gives the whole system an additional few degrees of freedom. in the event which we did have one uncontrolled event where the whole tree coming down and hitting the system, the forces are transferred not all to the mooring system, because of the flexibility in this torque rope, it allows for the rotor to be deflected out of the way.
 In the event that we had last year, the tree came down, snuck underneath the barge, got to our system, went underneath the housing mechanism where we have our generate or above water. It then lifted up the torque rope, got to the rotor, and the rotor basically jumped over the log and continued operating. That wouldn't have been possible if we had a solid shaft and a very rigid mooring system.

00;03;44;28 - 00;03;54;13 [Amanda Byrd] Moriel Arango is the CEO and CTO of BladeRunner Energy. And I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the Alaska Center for Energy and Power. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep.