Podcast: Lucid Energy CEO Bill Kelly

January 19, 2016

In 2015, Lucid Energy successfully landed the city of Portland a spot on the international news.

The company had figured out how to generate energy from the movement of water through city pipes. The Rose City immediately jumped on board.

Headlines flew from the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNBC, PBS and more.

“Pipe Dreams: Spinning Water into Watts”

“Turning pipelines into power generators”

The LucidPipe Power System enables industrial, municipal and agricultural facilities to produce clean, low-cost electricity from gravity-fed water pipelines and effluent streams.

With turbines resembling egg beaters, the system harnesses the untapped energy potential of moving water inside any free-flowing water pipe.

The electricity generated can be used on-site or fed to the grid to reduce energy costs.

That caught the attention of Portland Water Bureau and they began generating electricity — enough to power 150 homes per year — in one of its drinking water pipelines.

It’s an example of innovation at its most elegant: Capturing energy that would otherwise simply be lost.

The man at the helm of this innovation is Bill Kelly, a leader with experience working with utilities, technology companies and investors in the water sector and current President and CEO of Lucid.

I was happy to have Bill join me on the first freshwater Talk episode of 2016. Kelly walks through how the Lucid system works, why the water energy nexus is critical, and how he continues to foster new research with his team.

After listening, check out this story in the Fall 2015 issue of freshwater Magazine on Lucid.

And next month? I go spiritual with Diana Butler Bass, a historian of Christianity and author of “Grounded: Finding God in the World.” We’ll talk about how morality plays a role in the protection of our natural resources.

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