Turnagain Arm Tidal ElectricIty Generation Project

Chris Lee will present the Alaska Green Hydrogen Initiative (AG-HI) plan at the National Hydropower Association's annual meeting in Atlanta Oct 20-21. 

The plan presents a road map to a hydrogen fuel based economy by proving every facet of the hydrogen chain from production to end user, eventually powering 100% of  Alaska with renewable energy. 

FERC has granted The Turnagain Arm Tidal Electricity Generation project priority to file license.

The purpose of a preliminary permit is to secure the permit holder’s priority for hydropower development while it studies the feasibility of the project, including studying potential impacts for a period of 48 months from the date of issue.  

The Turnagain Arm Tidal Electricity Generation project has been accepted by FERC, aiming to bring inexpensive, renewable energy to 100% of Alaskans.

Tidal Energy Corp’s plan to install electricity generating turbines driven by tidal movement has been accepted for the pre-application process by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The proposed project will generate enough electricity to power the entire Alaska Railbelt grid, and supply clean power to every Bush community in Alaska through the creation of green hydrogen via a proposed electrolysis plant. 

The project calls for six tidal-barrage style power stations, each approximately one half mile long and three hundred feet wide, and spread in pairs through three proposed ‘tidal fields’ within Turnagain Arm, Alaska. An alternate plan to be studied concurrently will be a series of ‘corn row' type turbine arrays, similar to a wind farm, but underwater, mounted on the sea floor. Both configurations of the project are designed to generate 1.21 Gigawatts (GW) of baseline aggregate capacity, which would be 115% of the Alaskan Railbelt grid current power usage, and are only the first of Tidal Energy Corp’s ambitious plans to harvest power from Alaska’s waters for storage, transport and sale to energy purchasers around the world. 

Turnagain Arm, with the fourth highest tide range in the world, has long been thought an ideal site for a large scale hydrokinetic power project. The project’s creator, Dominic S.F. Lee, P.E., originally filed the plan with FERC in 2009 and kept the project moving forward until 2014. He withdrew his application to FERC after being unable to find financing for the studies required to garner a construction permit. Dominic Lee died in July of 2020. 

His son, Chris Lee, now president Turnagain Arm Tidal Energy Corp, states that “We are confident that the changes to the plan and the studies we plan to perform will mitigate the environmental concerns, particularly with regards to the marine life and delicate ecosystem of the inlet.” 

Dozens of large scale green hydrogen projects have been announced around the world in Europe, South America, the Middle East, and Australia. With the acceptance by FERC of the Turnagain Arm Tidal Electricity Generation plan, it now becomes both the first such large scale tidal project as well as green hydrogen project in the USA. A copy of the complete application can be viewed or printed on the “eLibrary” link of the Commission’s website.