Coming soon to an ocean floor near you: A fancy gizmo designed to detect energy-generating potential.

The acoustic Doppler current profiler represents an important step toward getting Bristol Bay on board with alternative energy, according to University of Alaska Fairbanks Bristol Bay Campus researchers.

This summer, they’ll use it to get accurate, continuous readings of the energy-producing potential of Bristol Bay’s tides.

“No one else has collected this data in the Bristol Bay area,” said Tina Carr, the project’s research aide. “I’m hoping from the data we collect this year, we can show there is potential out there for renewable resources. Then maybe one of these bigger firms could come in and get the turbines out there.”

If a tide is 4 knots or faster, it can spin a turbine to produce usable energy.
When they went out last summer to collect initial data, Carr and environmental science professor Todd Radenbaugh found some promising readings.

They were using a less precise item of gear called a flow meter, essentially a small propeller connected to an instrument for measuring tide flow, Radenbaugh said.
Because they had to manually collect the measurements with the flow meter each time they wanted to get a measurement, the research duo wasn’t able to get continuous readings for the area.

“It’s a long stick, and once you got to 100 meters (of ocean depth), it was hard to hold it down there,” Carr said. “You had to have two people holding this rod, plus you had to sit there and get the readings.”

But the acoustic Doppler current profiler can sit at the bottom of the bay unattended and collect a stream of tide measurements around the clock. The researchers have only to set it down, sit and wait, then retrieve the data and load it on to a computer.

“(From) the bottom of the bay, it shoots up a signal and calculates how fast particles go by it,” Radenbaugh said. “Everyone knows we have tidal energy; we’ll have the data and be able to more quantitatively talk about tidal energy. We can calculate the amount of kilowatts that are out there.”

Carr said she expects they’ll start using the current profiler starting in late May.

“We’ll probably do the practice run to see if we can set it down and pull it back up OK and make sure it can get anchored so it’s not going to go anywhere,” Carr said. “The first part of June we’ll probably go out and find a stationary spot, maybe in July or August try to move it again.”

She said she hopes that, in the future, production of slush ice for local commercial fishermen could be produced using tidal energy instead of diesel.

Source: The Bristol Bay Times 

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