A team from Verdant Energy attempts to install a turbine. (Photo courtesy of Verdant Energy)
An emerging industry has begun to harness the motion of waves, tides, and currents.
On the East Coast, several companies are already testing various technologies to
capture this new form of renewable energy, often called tidal power. While tidal
power is still in its infancy, companies studying it say it could
eventually be more profitable and more environmentally-friendly
than other forms of renewable energy. Amy Quinton reports:
Transcript
An emerging industry has begun to harness the motion of waves, tides, and currents.
On the East Coast, several companies are already testing various technologies to
capture this new form of renewable energy, often called tidal power. While tidal
power is still in its infancy, companies studying it say it could
eventually be more profitable and more environmentally-friendly
than other forms of renewable energy. Amy Quinton reports:
(Pare:) “Coming in it hits this shore pretty heavy, going out it hits the
Newington shore pretty heavy, it is a dramatic roar. It really is.”
Jack Pare, a retired aerospace systems engineer, points to the water
under the Little Bay Bridge in Dover, New Hampshire. Here, tides
from the Great Bay move quickly through a narrow opening to the
Piscataqua River – at almost nine feet per second at its maximum.
Pare sits on a state commission that will study tidal power generation
here under the bridge:
“It’s just one of many things you have to do if you want to – quote – ‘save the
planet’ or otherwise cut down on our carbon emissions.”
Renewable energy experts say energy from tides, currents and
waves could double the hydropower output in the U.S., producing
20% of the nation’s electricity. Right now, only one company
is producing tidal power so far in the United States.
A little known start-up called Verdant Power has six underwater
turbines, resembling windmills, in the East River in New York. Founder
Trey Taylor says those turbines can generate power 18 hours a day:
“That power is then put directly into a supermarket and a parking
garage. Oh and by the way, in that parking garage in New York City there are
electric vehicles that plug into tidal power, which we think is pretty
cool.”
Taylor foresees a time when 300 of these underwater turbines will
power about 8,000 homes in New York. Verdant Power has also
spent more than two million dollars putting high-tech equipment in
the water to test how fish would react to the slow moving turbines:
“All we’re seeing so far, and this is all recorded, is what we were told by fish biologists who we went to who did some modeling, is that fish would swim through them because they’re moving so slowly or that fish will swim around them. And what we’re seeing is, fish are swimming around them because there’s a lot of separation between the turbines.”
But Jack Pare points out the turbine technology that works well in
New York’s East River might not be appropriate for the Piscataqua:
“We have deep water shipping, we have harbor seals, we have stripers
and we have lobster, none of which are present on that other site. And so there’s
a little bit more to be careful of.”
But another company studying tidal power on the East Coast has
come up with a type of technology that may alleviate that problem.
Oceana Energy, which holds permits along the Piscataqua River, has
technology that looks like a large wheel, with an open center.
Project Manager Charles Cooper says that allows marine mammals
to swim through:
“The open center approach we think is both more environmentally
friendly and likely less costly and also likely to be able to be scaled to
different sizes and generate a lot for the amount of
hardware that has to be put together.”
But Cooper says each site is different, and Oceana remains open to
using other companies’ technology. He says tides in the Piscataqua
could theoretically produce about 100 megawatts of power,
enough for about 100,000 homes:
“That’s a substantial amount of power but I think that’s not really the main
emphasis of this type of development, this is going to be something that can be looked at as supplemental to the real base load energy generation.”
Cooper says while east coast tides have less strength than those on
the west coast, they come with more regularity and typically
surround heavily populated areas.
Verdant Power officials believe the renewable energy will eventually
be profitable – an early analysis shows tidal power costing Verdant
seven to eight cents per kilowatt hour.
Those energy costs are slightly higher than natural gas and fuel oil.
And so far, Verdant has produced that without government
subsidies.
For the Environment Report, I’m Amy Quinton.