Lucid Energy is a provider of renewable energy systems. Our patented LucidPipe™ Power System enables industrial, municipal and agricultural facilities to produce clean, reliable, low-cost electricity from their gravity-fed water pipelines and effluent streams.

Lucid Energy was formed in 2007 with the mission of creating a new way for industries – particularly those that use large amounts of water and electricity – to turn the untapped energy of moving water into cost-saving, renewable energy. Lucid Energy’s technology team invented an in-pipe turbine generator that captures energy from fast-moving water inside of pipelines without affecting operations.

In 2008, Lucid formed a strategic relationship with Northwest Pipe Company, the largest manufacturer of steel water transmission pipe in the United States. The two companies collaborated on the development of the lift-based turbine design that is the foundation for the LucidPipe in-pipe hydropower system. Because of LucidPipe’s unique vertical axis spherical turbine, which spins as water passes it, LucidPipe can operate across a wide range of flow conditions, volumes and velocities without any significant reduction in pressure.

Since 2008 the company has secured more than $3 million in private funding and more than $1 million from the U.S. Department of Energy.

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded Lucid Energy a phase 1 SBIR grant to field test LucidPipe.  Between 2010 and 2011, Lucid Energy successfully field piloted three generations of its LucidPipe Power System in in-line water pipelines at the Western Municipal Water District in Riverside California. Lucid Energy is putting a permanent system in Riverside this year and actively engaged with other major cities in the US who are leaders in smart water and energy innovation interested in clean, local sources of energy and reducing their operating costs.

Lucid Energy received its first patent in May 2011 and the company has filed continuations of this first patent and subsequent patents on more recent innovations to the technology.  Lucid is also filing patents outside the U.S. in the countries where hydropower is a rich and important component of their economic future.