Eastport, Maine, November 14, 2007 – An innovative new technology designed to harness the energy-generating potential of ocean tidal currents – long dreamed about by mariners and environmentalists alike – will be making a major splash near the end of the year when a Massachusetts-based company submerges its prototype Turbine-Generator Unit (TGU) off the coast of Eastport, Maine..

More than three years in development, the $1 million demonstration project by Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC) will test the effectiveness of a prototype of its patented Ocean Current Generation (OCGenTM) technology. The company anticipates that the pilot unit – to be tested over a three-week period – could generate as much as 15 to 25 kilowatts of power in a 6-knot current.

“The prospect of harnessing the epic power of the ocean is exciting on many levels,” said Chris Sauer, President and CEO of ORPC, an industry leader in the emerging field of tidal energy. “First, it has enormous potential for providing a significant portion of our nation’s future energy needs on a cost-efficient and reliable basis. What’s more, at a time when there is a strong need to reduce mankind’s affect on our global environment, our OCGen™ technology is ecologically friendly, having no gaseous and liquid discharges. We’re obviously very excited about being in a position to demonstrate what our technology can do.”

The demonstration project is scheduled to launch the first week of December when the 25-foot wide by 4-four round TGU – which contains two horizontally mounted cylindrical water turbines with a generator placed between the turbines – is submerged 30 feet below a barge in the channel between Eastport, Maine and Deer Island, New Brunswick. The barge will be held in place by a standard mooring system as the tidal currents move through the turbines and electricity is generated, metered and then dissipated on the deck of the barge.

(The precise timing of the deployment could be delayed by weather, which for the Bay of Fundy in December, could pose some unwieldy challenges. While the commercial OCGenTM units will not be affected by meteorological conditions – given the fact that they will be placed well below the water surface and anchored in place from the bottom – the demonstration project could definitely be impacted by adverse weather conditions. Still, according to Ernie Hauser, ORPC project manager for the demonstration project, the company is hoping for a “mild December in Eastport.”).

While the OCGenTM equipment uses a variety of technologies that were not available 20 years ago, the basic design concept behind the TGU is relatively simple. [Note to editors: renderings of the OCGenTM technology are available at the ORPC website at www.OceanRenewablePower.com] The TGU is just part of a much larger power-generation platform that will contain several “stacked” TGUs that are combined with buoyancy/ballasting and other modular components to create an OCGenTM module. The generating capacity of an OCGenTM module could be as high as 1,000 kilowatts in a 6-knot current. This could be enough electricity to power over 200 average U.S. households.

According to Sauer, the upfront costs for building OCGen TM power-generating projects will be comparable to those for wind projects. However, unlike other renewable energy sources, such as wind or solar, tidal current-generated electricity is predictable, so it can be scheduled.

The upcoming demonstration project is the first phase that ORPC has set for commercializing the OCGenTM technology. Following this proof-of-concept project, the company expects to raise between $10 million and $12 million in venture funding, money needed to build and install a prototype full-scale OCGen™ module that would use two to four turbine TGUs and would include extensive monitoring equipment to assess the potential impacts on the marine environment. The prototype OCGenTM module would then be tested and monitored, and data would be collected for at least a year. The development process for the prototype full-scale OCGen™ module will involve additional TGU demonstration projects, including one that ORPC hopes to conduct at its Cook Inlet site in Alaska in late summer 2008.

To date, ORPC has raised nearly $2 million to fund the development of the technology and the company. Maine Technology Institute provided a $300,000 Development Award and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative awarded the company $300,000 in SEED funding. The balance of the funding has come from private investors.

The testing site in Western Passage between Eastport and Deer Island is within the site boundaries of the Preliminary Permit that ORPC has received from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. ORPC also has Preliminary Permits for a site in nearby Cobscook Bay (Maine) and in Cook Inlet, near Anchorage, Alaska. ORPC intends to develop commercial OCGenTM projects at those and additional sites that will be identified and permitted in the future.

About Ocean Renewable Power Company
Ocean Renewable Power Company, LLC (ORPC) was founded in 2004 for the purpose of generating reliable, competitive, emission-free electricity from the virtually unlimited energy resources of the oceans. ORPC is a developer of both ocean current technology and ocean current projects. ORPC is developing proprietary modular ocean current generation (OCGen™) technology and will incorporate it into environmentally superior, financially successful, tidal, deep water ocean current and run-of-river generation projects. ORPC’s management team are professionals with extensive experience in the development and financing of cogeneration, independent power and renewable energy facilities. For more information about ORPC, visit the company online at www.oceanrenewablepower.com.