Energyminer: Transforming Rivers Into Renewable Energy Sources

Founded in 2021, Energyminer develops and operates kinetic hydropower plants generating electricity out of the floating water of rivers without any negative ecological impact. With their flagship product, the Energyfish, Energyminer aims to make a significant contribution to the advancement of the energy transition.

Energyminer has taken an innovative approach to harnessing renewable energy and come up with the Energyfish; a kinetic hydropower plant which generates electricity through the flowing of rivers and lakes. Each Energyfish can run 24 hours a day, has a lifespan of 10 to 20 years, and has no ecological impact on the wildlife in the water. As CTO Chantel Niebuhr elaborates further: “…using more than a hundred of these Energyfish 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 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.”

Unlike wind or solar power, the Energyfish is capable of providing baseload power, meaning it reliably produces electricity in all weather conditions throughout the year. But what’s also impressive is the thought put into the materials used for the creation of the Energyfish. “This is a recyclable HDPE structure that the housing is made of. 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. 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.”

Onshape is the first and only cloud-native product development platform that delivers professional-grade CAD capabilities with next-generation product data management (PDM), powering agile design processes at lower costs. Our expert Jon Hirschtick talks us through the role Onshape had in the development of the Energyfish: “Onshape's unique cloud-based CAD and PDM platform has enabled Energyminer’s engineers to work collaboratively on the modular design of the Energyfish 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%. Onshape's real time design updates and built in simulation tools have also allowed the team to test turbine components and modify designs really efficiently, ensuring compatibility with ecological conditions and operational standards”.