THE INNOVATORS
How Emrgy is Disrupting the Hydropower Industry
Emrgy's first array, a 10–unit pilot project installed for Denver Water.
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olar and wind power have exploded in popularity in recent years as facilities have become cheaper to build, but up until now, this has not been true of a third renewable power source, hydropower. This is primarily because hydropower relies on large installations that require civil construction. A new startup called Emrgy is seeking to change all this with its small, modular, distributed hydropower installations, which can be installed without civil construction. In this interview, Emily Morris, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Emrgy, speaks with Irrigation Leader Editor-in-Chief Kris Polly about her company’s innovative hydropower installations. Kris Polly: Please tell us about your background. Emily Morris: I went to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where I created my own business degree. Despite having a graduate school of management, Vanderbilt doesn’t have an undergraduate business program, so I mixed organizational and corporate strategy studies. I graduated in 2009.
Emily Morris: I do not. I have a business degree. I’ve worked in engineering and among engineers my whole career, so I say I am an engineer by osmosis. I try to listen as well as I can to those who have training in those fields.
32 | IRRIGATION LEADER
Emily Morris: Emrgy was founded with a vision to take the attributes that made the solar power and wind power industries grow exponentially and bring them to hydropower. Emrgy builds modular hydropower systems that are flexible in where they can be located. The modular nature of the systems allows customers to increase their hydropower capacity by quantity of units instead of by size of equipment. I founded the company in 2014 after building the initial prototypes and embedding the technology at a defense contractor. This technology was originally funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research. Personally, I was inspired by what the technology could do and how it enabled hydropower facilities to be distributed across a number of different areas rather than relying on large, centralized facilities. Our simple product is essentially an open 8-foot precast concrete cube with hydrokinetic turbines inside. You place the concrete box into a channel of flowing water— irrigation canals are a perfect example—and as water flows through the box, it spins a turbine rotor. The mechanical energy is converted into electrical energy, which can either be sent back into the grid or sent directly into a microgrid or off-grid application. I started working on the company in 2015 after receiving $1.25 million of grant money from the U.S. Department of Energy to continue our research and product development. I was also fortunate to get impact investors and venture
PHOTO COURTESY OF EMRGY.
Kris Polly: Do you have an engineering degree?
Kris Polly: Please tell us about your company, Emrgy.
