The federal government’s support of renewable energy is making a difference in Goshen.
Lucid Energy Technologies, located downtown, was awarded a $150,000 grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration Nov. 25 for installation of its new spherical turbine system at the millrace powerhouse.
“There’s a lot more money in the budgets for these things right now due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,” company president Tim Braun said.
Approximately one out of 10 applicants were approved for the competitive grant, Director of Communications Gina Leichty said. She explained the reason the company applied specifically for the powerhouse project.
“We like to do a local project for beta installations,” Leichty said, “to have it as a showpiece so our engineers can take people.”
The project will also be a laboratory to check different configurations for the turbine, according to Braun. He said the project will allow Lucid to generate renewable power for Goshen while also generating durability data and performance data over time regarding the turbine and provide evidence that the company’s product is viable for commercial use.
The unique design of the spherical turbine was thought up by employee Rod Schlabach, while he and others were in a meeting with their development partner. They were trying to determine how to make a ball-shaped turbine to go inside a pipe, rather than installing one of their helical turbines inside a square duct within the pipe.
“It just poofed in my brain,” Schlabach said. “The thought process was ‘well, how can we bend blades, how can they fit in a sphere,’ and the picture in my mind literally was how you lay tape on a basketball.”
After a few hours of work the next morning with another employee who specializes in computer-aided-design, a digital model of the turbine was created.
For Schlabach, who is a lifetime resident of Goshen, to have the installation at the powerhouse is a special opportunity.
“As a kid, I spent my childhood messing around on the millrace, floating down it on rafts,” he said. “Having grown up in Goshen, it’s a really rewarding thing to actually have that in place on the millrace.”
Obtaining the grant and installing the unit is only the beginning of a much larger opportunity for the company.
“It’s a very important grant because it’s a gateway to applying for larger funding,” Leichty said. “So now that we’re through this initial phase we can apply for phase II and phase III.”
Through those additional phases, Lucid could receive millions of dollars for commercialization of the product, getting it ready for the market and building the capacity to produce the turbine for consumers.
The $150,000 must be used by June 6 if the company is to apply for the next phases.
Local News
Grant will fund millrace turbine
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