Emerging Energy Technology Fund pilot program brings new energy tech to the Alaska SeaLife Center

Among the dozens of energy issues being debated in the Alaska State, the creation of an Emerging Energy Technology Fund stands out in its potential to promote innovation and diversification of Alaska’s resource development portfolio. As an early supporter of an EETF in Alaska, the Denali Commission carried out a pilot program in 2009, selecting the SeaLife Center as one of their nine grant recipients and bringing a new, cost-effective heat source into Alaska’s energy catalogue. 

Included in both the House and Senate omnibus energy bills, the Emerging Energy Technology Fund (EETF) would support undemonstrated cutting edge energy technologies.  Selected projects would aim to ease Alaska’s dependence on high priced fossil fuels while at the same time generate technological, industrial, and educational growth in the state’s energy sector.  

Although the proposed EETF has seen widespread support from legislators in Juneau, some question the pressing need for the program and ask what kind of visible growth such incentives would bring to the state.  An ingenious example demonstrating the fund’s potential is heating up at the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward.  

The aquarium’s application for a Heat Pump Demonstration Project fit the grant criteria perfectly.  The proposed technology has never been demonstrated in Alaska. The technology can use renewable energy sources, and can be replicated and marketed around the state so that its benefits can be widely shared, and it has potential for worldwide export to drive economic development at home in Alaska.  

At first the project sounds unreal: Design a pump system that will extract latent heat from raw seawater (averaging between 35F and 55F in Resurrection Bay near Seward) and, like little gulps of air filling a beach ball, build that heat up to 120F for a building’s heating system.  The key to the system is a series of pumps, valves, and heat exchangers through which the seawater and a number of specific antifreezes and refrigerants flow and react.  Through calculated contact and organized vaporization and pressurization loops, the seawater can keep a building toasty for tourists, spring, summer, winter or fall.  

The workings of an Ocean Heat Pump defy easy comprehension. The idea of somehow taking 5F of excess heat and adding it up to 120F is counterintuitive, but it isn’t magic (or is it? Arthur C. Clark’s 3rd law of prediction).  Norway and Sweden are already using similar ocean water heat pumps. These governments have worked with energy innovators for years in an effort to more efficiently light and heat their remote northern communities.

Now, with grants totaling $713,300, Alaska will harness that technology to heat the ASLC’s 115,000 square foot facility – a project that affects the heart of both the education and tourism sectors.  With that modest investment, the SeaLife Center will save 57,000 gallons per year of heating fuel, reduce carbon emissions by over a ton annually, and Alaska will add another energy tool to its belt for addressing countless remaining challenges around the state.

And that’s why project designer and founder of Your Clean Energy, Andy Baker, gets so jazzed about the whole thing.

“I’m a guy who enjoys engineering,” Baker said. “And I like helping people.”

These traits help give Baker his penchant for solving energy problems in off-the-grid communities.  Finding solutions to Alaska’s energy questions is an exploration Baker enjoys, and one he thinks should be done in-house.  “Alaska needs to do this ourselves.  We can keep the investment at home and use the innovation to fuel our state,” Baker said.  

Scientists and economists agree that testing new technologies in Alaska makes sense due to our unique conditions and high base-level energy rates.  And just as the new seawater heat pump in Seward draws on Scandinavian technology, innovative Alaskan solutions can be exported to the 1.6 billion people living in off-the grid communities around the world.  As is being demonstrated at the SeaLife Center, the Emerging Energy Technology Fund can generate solutions today, while priming the pump for a new high tech industry and Alaska’s future.