**Title**: Energy in the North - Ben Loeffler
**Date**: February 11, 2026
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Ben Loeffler


00;00;00;10 - 00;00;07;09 [Ben Loeffler] You know, we were constantly checking in on the footage, constantly looking at the data. You know, it was the last thing I did before bed. Every night, the first thing in the morning.

00;00;07;09 - 00;00;47;05 [Amanda Byrd] This week on energy in the North, I speak to Ben Loeffler, a Pacific Marine Energy Center co-lead and Hydrokinetic program lead at ACEP. Ben and his team have been working with BladeRunner for the past four years, developing and testing their marine energy turbine at the Tanana River hydrokinetic test site near Nenana. Tests have usually involved a lot of real time in-person monitoring and data collection, and mitigating potential hazards like floating trees coming down the river. Last summer, Ben and his team conducted an 11 day unattended testing of BladeRunner, and I began the conversation by asking why an unattended testing is so important.

00;00;47;05 - 00;01;37;24 [Ben Loeffler] So there's obviously a lot that we learn, you know, in real time, hands on adjusting parameters, looking at, you know, impacts of certain settings on performance and obviously being there to protect, turbines from debris. But there's a lot you can't learn until you rack up hours about, you know, the efficacy of a system for the real world. And so, you know, we had to do a lot on our end to prepare the test site to be able to host an unattended test like that. And it's a new capability. It lets us validate a systems performance, not just look at the direct impacts of, you know, certain controls or system changes, but it lets us see how a system performs over time over a wider range of conditions. So, for example, the river velocity in a given day might vary in a very narrow range, but over 11 days we actually saw a much broader range of river velocities. So that was really helpful.

00;01;37;24 - 00;01;45;13 [Amanda Byrd] And so to set up for a test like that, for running 11 days unattended, you must have done some setting up of the barge

00;01;45;13 - 00;02;21;15 [Ben Loeffler] Yeah. So we started with kind of what we needed to feel comfortable leaving a turbine unattended. And so we needed to be able to see things in real time, see data in real time. We needed to be able to control the turbine remotely. And so to do all of that, you know, first we needed communications. And so we got, satellite internet set up on the barge. And then all of those things require electricity. And whereas in the past we had, you know, little portable generators on deck, and we would just keep the gas tanks topped off throughout the day. We actually did build a whole sort of mini grid on the barge with batteries and solar and a backup generator, to make sure that all of the instrumentation and communications and cameras were were powered continuously during the test.

00;02;21;15 - 00;02;25;06 [Amanda Byrd] Let's, step back a little bit and talk about this turbine.

00;02;25;06 - 00;02;50;25 [Ben Loeffler] Yes. Initially, the rotor, the turbine rotor is on the end of a long drive shaft. And that that drive shaft allows the turbine to move in the water. And in particular, when it interacts with sticks or trees or debris, it's able to deflect around them rather than being damaged by them directly or entangling with them and getting clogged up.

00;02;50;25 - 00;03;02;17 [Amanda Byrd] And you guys have been working on this Blade Runner technology with the developers for maybe the past four years. It must have been like nail biting to walk away for 11 days and leave the baby that you have been nurturing for years in the water.

00;03;02;17 - 00;03;23;22 [Ben Loeffler] Totally. Yeah. Both. I know Memorial at Blade Runner, energy and myself. You know, we were constantly checking in on the footage, constantly looking at the data. You know, it was the last thing I did before bed. Every night, the first thing in the morning. We had alerts set up. So we had certain parameters that if the data went out of ranges, we would get text message alerts. you know, we had minor alerts that came through, but, you know, no, no big, problems that came up.

00;03;23;22 - 00;03;27;00 [Amanda Byrd] How did the how did the 11 days go? What did you learn?

00;03;27;00 - 00;04;02;25 [Ben Loeffler] Yeah, it was it was really interesting. We got to, you know, we could look at, you know, many hours of data with a particular control setting, and then we could change that control setting and and let it run for, you know, another day or two days. And so, whereas in the past, you know, we would just have maybe ten minute intervals between control system changes and we'd see a really narrow range of velocities. Now we got to run certain control parameters over, you know, over many days and seen many different types of velocity fluctuations. And, we got to refine some of the, there's some depth control for the rotor. And so we got to see that behave over a wider range of conditions and tune some of those parameters.

00;04;02;25 - 00;04;05;23 [Amanda Byrd] So what's the next step for the for the rotor.

00;04;05;23 - 00;04;45;02 [Ben Loeffler] Yeah. So the next step is tentatively, we're awaiting final approval. But we've torn down the system and sort of analyzed all the components. The plan is to rebuild it. You know, making improvements, or repairs, where necessary and prepare it for a pilot deployment in Napaimute in 2026. So it would first come to the test site for another, maybe week of just shakedown testing, making sure everything works after reassembly. And then we would, get it shipped out to the Kuskokwim river and try and get it in there. And again, you know, being able to operate it remotely, observe data and video feeds, live remotely. Also the magic of satellite internet.

00;04;45;02 - 00;05;00;22 [Amanda Byrd] Ben Loeffler is a Pacific Marine Energy Center co-lead and Hydrokinetic program lead at ACEP, and I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the Alaska Center for Energy and Power.Find this story and more at ÃÛÌÒTV.edu/acep