Project dates: 01. Aug 2019 - 31. Jul 2021
Objective
Energy utilities, investors and project developers are actively looking for decentralized solutions that combine sustainability with stable and risk-free energy production at low cost. Since wind and solar are highly intermittent, hydropower is to take an important role in the energy mix. An alternative to large dam facilities is small hydropower technologies but they still present the major challenge of size reduction in order to lower the usable head (water height) to under 3 meters. All kinds of hydropower techniques have been tried to scale down for local and to lower the usable head to under 3 meters, without success until now. TURBULENT provides a reliable, cost efficient, micro hydropower plant uniquely designed to use a very low head stream (<3m) without impact. Based on a biomimicry, the power plant generates energy close to the end user ranging from 15kW to 100kW. • No dams= Fish friendliness = Reduction of civil works >50% . • Smaller, lighter, easier installation and maintenance. • Biomimic impeller design = Double energy production with same size • =Cheaper cost-of-energy €0,026/kWh. (Solar is € 0.06kWh) Current TRL is 7. 2 Real scale demonstrators and 1 commercial setting succesfully completed & in operation. MARKET: Global <3m hydropower installation potential of 341GW! This represents a global market opportunity of €1x10^12 (1 Billion €). Turbulent is unleashing the potential of micro hydropower and expanding the technology in EU & abroad countries through trained and certified distributors (Viral in social media +100M views = +3.5K requests received). The SME project will allow to accelerate the market entry and the company team growth (37 employees by 2023). In 2021 the company will reach profitability and the forecast show a cumulative EBITDA in 5 years of €64M. Funding needs. A first seed round of €1.6M has been signed with commitment to sum another €1.6M in 2020. In this project we request 2.3M to scale up.