Energyminer: Transforming rivers into renewable energy sources

“We are at the forefront of innovation.”

In this episode of Third Angle, we’re heading over to Gröbenzell to explore hydrokinetic power generation with Energyminer. The Energyfish is a crucial part of Energyminer's offering, providing turnkey power plants composed of schools of Energyfish, which harness river currents to produce sustainable energy 24 hours a day, all without disrupting aquatic ecosystems.

We spoke to Chantel Niebuhr, CTO of Energyminer, about the development of innovative technology and how it aims to decentralise energy production for a cleaner future. With modular, fish-friendly turbines, Energyfish is designed to adapt to various water environments, making clean energy accessible even in remote locations.

Find out more about Energyminer here. 

Find out more about OnShape here.

Your host is Paul Haimes from industrial software company PTC. 

Episodes are released bi-weekly. Follow us on LinkedIn and X for updates.

This is an 18Sixty production for PTC. Executive producer is Jacqui Cook. Sound design and editing by Rema Mukena. Location recording by Marleen Kaesebier. Music by Rowan Bishop and stream sounds by Mike Stranks, freesound.

Transcript

Welcome to Third Angle, where we're transforming rivers into power plants.

I'm your host, Paul Hames, from industrial software company PTC. In this podcast, we share the moments where digital transforms physical and meet the brilliant minds behind some of the most innovative products all around the world, each powered by PTC technology.

In this episode, we're putting a lens on renewable energy with Energy Miner. A company unlocking the power of hydrokinetic energy. Energyfish harnesses the power of river currents to generate sustainable energy, all without disrupting aquatic ecosystems. We visited their headquarters to meet Chantelle Nibua, CTO of Energy Miner, alongside our producer, Marlene Kasebier, as she guides us through the development of Energyfish and how it has the potential to decentralize energy production That's a hundred percent clean and able to generate 24 hours a day.

So I'm Chantal Nibua. I'm the CTO at Energy Miner. We built this energy fish with the idea of something that is going into a market that doesn't exist yet. And that was using kinetic energy of flowing water. So you typically have these hydropower systems that require potential energy. So you need sort of,  either what you can imagine, like a mini waterfall, or you need to dam up.

a river section to produce some potential.  we can actually just attach our, our systems to the riverbed or canal bed, and then produce energy using the energy in the free stream. So we don't need to build any potential, and that's what makes us unique. And through this concept, we open the doors to producing hydropower where previously it wasn't possible.

And that's the big idea behind hydroponetic energy and also focusing on small scale. So by using more than a hundred of these energy fish together in one system or in one school gives us the potential to build up what would be, or what is a large energy producer, but with a minimal environmental impact.

That's sort of the forefront of innovation because you have it over a big area and you are not destroying anything locally. You are being minimally invasive in the environment. , we are not hurting fish in any way. So we designed our power plant in that way. We made sure that our rotors spin very slowly, that you don't have fish being injured as turbine.

 and also that our leading edge thickness is thick enough also to not injure fish if there is a strike, but also the way that it is anchored,  the way that it's built up and deployed is in a way that is minimally invasive in the environment. We, we are building something that hasn't been built in this way before.

 we're using. What were maybe a lot of theoretical concepts in academia. It's cutting edge technology that we are implementing. So this is our little company that we have built up here. This was our second offices that we have now.  and we're expanding quickly or need, need the space to build up our energy fish devices.

 so as you can see here on the floor, we have our open offices where all of our colleagues can sit and work. And we also have the. This big area that allows us to actually build up our energy fish here on site and test different aspects of it. So you'll also see in the corner of the office, we have,  a very nice test bench set up where we can test all our mechanical components and everything that's basically between the water and the fish.

A wire going to grid and you can also see our big housing or how the energy fish actually looks in full scale, which is approximately the size of a smart car. And it makes it very portable and easy to move around. So our process of developing initially started using a,  sort of a little proof of concept where we could prove, okay, this concept that we have in mind actually works.

And then we went into optimizing and increasing efficiency, which was all,  simulative work. And that was sort of based on trying to find. How big should the energy fish be to make it most efficient?  how can we make sure that we're not losing anything from our energy capture area? And what is the best crossover between manufacturing size to make sure that our costs are low As well as getting the best energy output from groups of these devices So then we develop a or decided on a final scale,  and, and then went into the sort of manufacturing process, which is how do we manufacture the super intricate design?

And to produce a very complex shape like that is not very easy.  we can test everything from the actual energy fish itself into grid feed in here in our offices. We always want to make sure that everything works perfectly before we then take it to site and test it.

So we're aiming to be fully recyclable. We're not just building our turbines to produce renewable energy, but we want to create the whole device centered around sustainability and the whole concept and the materials that we use, as well as decommissioning after the power plant needs to be decommissioned.

If that hopefully doesn't happen soon. And with our energy fish, so they typically have a lifespan of 10 to 20 years. And we wanted to make sure that the housing is very light. The whole structure should be very lightweight. And to actually achieve that in a very. Low cost manufacturing way was one of our biggest challenges with trying to find the right material  at the right thicknesses to make sure that our structure is strong, but also very lightweight.

This is a recyclable HDPE structure that our device basically that the housing is made of, you can hear that it's completely hollow.  and yeah, so you can see it with a flotational body above it,  and the basically any energy capture area. So we have two circular portions below the float that hold the power.

The propellers that then basically capture the energy and produce power for our energy fish. So,  yeah, so this is where we do all of our testing. We actually building our own installation boats where we can deploy our energy fish and pick them up out of the water and test them and check if everything is working correctly ourselves.

So that's a pretty cool project. So the casing around the propellers is shaped like a So it's almost like a,  parachute shape or balloon shape. And what it does is it actually causes, , sort of a suction effect around the blades.  and this enforces a local velocity increase and the, , energy capture from a hydrokinetic device is.

Very exponentially dependent on the velocity. So if you have a site with higher velocity, you have exponentially higher power output. So to even increase the velocity around the blades by 0. 1 meters per second, exponentially increases your power output. And that's where we got a lot of playing around with, with what shape would optimize this and ensure that we get the most out of that area.

 and just having that free flow through the turbine and actually capturing as much as possible,  hasn't been. Achieved in the way that we have achieved it. So hydrokinetic energy in itself isn't a new concept It's something that's been around since the water wheel that's it's evolved into what we have now And  this fully submerged way of of I mean a hydrokinetic turbine in itself is If you, if you picture a wind turbine underwater, that's sort of the concept that you're looking at.

But the difference is air versus water, you have a thousand times more density, which means a thousand times more power. So you don't need that bigger energy capture area. And,  a big plus on, on what recent developments in hydrokinetic energy have developed or come to, or the point they are now and what we are using is that casing that you see around our turbine.

So,  using structures that basically enforce a local higher velocity around the blades that give you a much higher efficiency than what would be available if you just placed a propeller in free stream flow is what,  sort of hydrokinetic energy. Has evolved into and what we are developing and not a lot of people have, I mean, some have tried this there's, there's a lot of new,  companies that have, you know, or smaller companies that have tried to look at concepts such as these, but no company that has successfully implemented multiple of these devices in the way that we are implementing it,  in terms of scale and structure, as well as how we deploy them.

using arrays and not just these single devices. And I think that's what will hopefully result in a much bigger success. So that was sort of getting to our pre series plans and then obviously our test bench, testing a lot of different combinations of propellers and,  generators and gearboxes, and control systems, and  you know, optimizing our IoT platform, ensuring that we can monitor these devices remotely,  that we can ensure that operation is always good, when do we need to do maintenance, how often do we need to do maintenance, all of these questions have to be answered.

And, and that was only possible through actually installing something. And that's what we did in Munich. We installed it in a canal, a very dirty area. So downstream of the zoo. So we have a lot of, a lot of interesting biofilm growth,  and a lot of, of leaves and branches and things that plug up the device,  that we could test and see that we don't have these problems or to, to alter our design, to make sure that we don't need to do maintenance often.

And that we can actually have these systems running safely in rivers for long periods of time without. Having to interfere. So the future of energy mining and hydro kinetic energy is really great in terms of being able to provide the base load capable energy and something that is deployable now, something that is readily available.

We don't need five years to produce this or to, to build these power plants. We can deploy them tomorrow if need be. And that's what we need, a solution that can be implemented now that can be scaled up really quickly and that can provide a base load renewable energy power source to the energy mix and also have a decentralized solution so we can place these you know anywhere where you need power you don't need to have one big power plant in a central location and transport the power using big grids to another place in Germany, for instance, where you need to use it, you can place the, or smaller or larger versions or, , any amount of array or any amount of energy fish in arrays that you need locally and produce power locally.

And that sort of just takes a little bit of the pressure off the grid with the decentralized solution again, because we have this. This way of installing power plants locally where we need it. We can also go into rural areas where you maybe don't have a good,  in future. This isn't our concept at the moment, but in future, I mean, there's endless possibilities with hydrogenic energy,  in third world countries and in places where you have no electricity supply at the moment, currently we have our pre series power plant, which is finished and has also been deployed in Munich.

And we're currently producing multiple of these. And,  day to day, we just trying to improve it.  this can be done, as I said, simulatively, , we do a lot of CFD modeling to ensure that we're using the right shape of diffuser structure around our propellers.  because that's our optimization technique.

That's what our low cost way of making sure that we're getting a very high efficiency, which hasn't been done before in hydrokinetic energy. We're working hard to, to make sure that when we have thousands of these devices all over the world, we can monitor everything locally,  on one system and have real time data coming in every second and monitor exactly what's happening,  to be able to respond really quickly if you need to, because we are in river sections, you know, we working in something that's very crucial to ensure that you don't have.

blockages or flood events.

That was Chantelle from Energy Miner, sharing their knowledge on creating a cleaner and more sustainable future. Now it's time to meet our expert John Hirschtick from PTC. John, Energy Miner is pioneering sustainable hydrokinetic energy through its innovative energy fish technology, which enhances renewable energy generation while maintaining the all important ecological harmony.

How has Onshape facilitated Energy Miner in designing, testing, and deploying its modular, fish friendly hydrokinetic turbines? 

Great question. Let me break that down into four areas. The first area is design collaboration and modularity. Onshape's unique cloud based CAD and PDM platform has enabled Energy Miner's engineers to work collaboratively on the modular design of the Energy Fish turbines.

This has allowed them to tailor designs to varying water body conditions and energy demands while maintaining ecological safety, such as low speed rotors to ensure fish survival at rates above 99%. The second area is real time iteration and testing. EnergyFish's success relies heavily on iterative testing to optimize performance.

Onshape's real time design updates and built in simulation tools allow the team to test turbine components and modify designs really efficiently, ensuring compatibility with ecological conditions and operational standards. The third area is Advanced data management energy minor leverages on shapes built in PDM to give them centralized data management streamlines, parts tracking and version control.

This ensures smooth scaling from pilot installations all the way through to larger deployments without risking misalignment in design or production phases. The fourth area Enhanced accessibility and field integration. Onshape's unique accessibility from any device empowers Energy Miner's team to make immediate design adjustments, even if they're on site at pilot installations or in very remote collaborative settings.

For explaining Onshape in this journey, Chantelle Niebr. for sharing Energy Miner's mission and our producer Marlene Kasebier for taking us on the tour with them. Please rate, review, and subscribe to our bi weekly Third Angle episodes wherever you listen to your podcasts and follow PTC on LinkedIn and X for future episodes.

Companies that make products the world relies on, rely on PTC. This is an 1860 production for PTC. Executive producer is Jackie Cook. Sound design and editing by Rema Mukena. Location recording by Marlene Kasebier. And music by Rowan Bishop.