High-tech sunken tidal turbines

I guess engineers don’t like land-based turbines anymore 17

Recently, I posted about a Canadian group that created a helium-filled floating wind turbine. On the opposite side of sea level, a Virgina-based team has installed several underwater turbines in New York's East River. Posted today on MIT's Technology Review (a good technology publication btw).

Working from barges and tugboats off New York City's Roosevelt Island, engineers are battling northeasters and this month's heavy spring tides to install the first major tidal-power project in the United States. The project involves a set of six submerged turbines that are designed to capture energy from the East River's tidal currents. The three-bladed turbines, which are five meters in diameter and resemble wind turbines, are made by Verdant Power of Arlington, VA.

Thanks to lessons learned by wind turbine designers, tidal power is already economically competitive, producing electricity at prices similar to wind power, according to feasibility studies by the Electric Power Research Institute, an industry R&D consortium. And it offers a big advantage over wind and other renewables: a precisely predictable source of energy. As a result, developers in the United States have laid claim to the best sites up and down the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. In the past four years the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington, DC, has issued preliminary permits for tidal installations at 25 sites, and it is considering another 31 applications.

Moving rotors under the sea would seem to threaten environmental impact, but engineers are said to have solved that problem.

Stay tuned to see where else creative engineers can place turbines.

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  1. Gar Lipow's avatar

    Gar Lipow Posted 4:31 pm
    23 Apr 2007

    tidesTides don't offer all that much potential either world wide or in the U.S.
    Ocean currents, on the other hand, have huge potentials, and can use exactly the same technology.

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  2. planetthoughts Posted 7:27 pm
    23 Apr 2007

    Let a hundred flowers bloom...It is a hopeful sign that effort is being put into many technologies.  As anyone with an engineering background (such as myself) knows, the initial calculations are very important, but only in implementation can one finally be sure of benefits and negatives of an approach in a new field.  It seems that companies investing in tidal power must know something... and the technologies being developed in rivers will later apply to oceans.
    Mostly, we see a lot of creative energy going into alternative sources of power.  "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend" - in this case, no one will be arrested and detained as they were in Maoist China.  Hopefully the government will become an intelligent supporter of a variety of solutions, until a few clear winners become obvious, and any solution that fills a niche and that provides a net positive in energy, will likely continue to thrive even if it is not a primary source of worldwide power.

    David Alexander

    PlanetThoughts.org



    Love your Planet.

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  3. odograph Posted 8:29 pm
    23 Apr 2007

    bottom cleaningWhere I live, boat owners pay a scuba diver for a monthly visit and bottom cleaning.  And the buoys grow a pretty good beard before they are serviced.
    Ocean power sounds wild, but it boggles my mind that they can keep things clean enough over the long haul, and that maintenance costs don't gobble profits (whether booked as dollars or kWh).
    (The sausage sort of sea power things look like they could grow a pretty good beard without impacting performance ... but turbines?)

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  4. Icelander Posted 10:56 pm
    23 Apr 2007

    Environmental impactThey'll be installing these things in high-flow areas, which are usually deserted by fish. It would take a lot of energy for a fish to try to stay in an area like that. And they spin relatively slowly, especially since they're only about 15' in diameter.
    But the stationary crustacean question is a good one. I've heard certain types of paint will prevent barnacles and mussels from adhering.

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  5. amazingdrx Posted 11:40 pm
    23 Apr 2007

    River and tidal currentsThese propellotrs turn slowly because the water moves much slower than wind does.  180 times the power potential exists in flowing water compared to the same volume of moving air.  The greater density of water is the key factor.
    But the propellors are a problem for wildlife and navigation.  A system that is less obtrusive could be installed up and down coasts in river mouths.  For a lot greater power potential than propellor driven designs.
    For ocean currents propellor machines are great. Suspended from the bottom of wind/wave power floating platforms they could add force to the generators from the Gulf stream, for instance.
    Hot pepper oil in the paint seems to help repel unwanted hitch hiker organisms from boats.

    http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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  6. odograph Posted 11:59 pm
    23 Apr 2007

    techAs we saw in another conversation, it is easy to name "futures" (tech industry slang for innovations not currently available).  It may be that anti-fouling paints (already a centuries old field) are still improving.
    Many of them rely on heavy-metal poisons, which might make them an uncertain win for the Grist crowd:
    http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/biscayne-forams/metals.html
    Regardless, they do not seem to have bit to strong into the bottom cleaning business:
    http://www.sfsailing.com/cgi-bin/mbi/bottom.cfm
    BTW, I did notice that the closing paragraph in the original article was:
    "Although scale will reduce costs, Clean Current president Glen Darou says the nascent industry will also have plenty of work ahead proving the reliability of its mechanical and electrical systems underwater. 'Salt water is insidious,' says Darou; try as you might to seal it out, corrosive seawater 'will get in there eventually.'"
    Indeed, not only insidiously corrosive ... but biologically active as well, with not just "hitch hikers" or fauna, but great varieties of flora as well.

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  7. odograph Posted 12:00 am
    24 Apr 2007

    noteAs an illustration of the term:
    When a software salesman comes to see you, you might want to make sure he isn't selling you "futures" but instead the product he has today.

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  8. amazingdrx Posted 12:05 am
    24 Apr 2007

    HeheyNot much "future" in software.
    Can't one hire that done in India via telecommuting for pennies on the dollar?  
    So much for predictions.

    http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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  9. odograph Posted 12:23 am
    24 Apr 2007

    if it was that easyyou could hire a few hundred alt-energy inventors as well, problem solved (?)
    and bloggers!  and pseudo commentators!  where will it end!
    (maybe I should hire a couple dozen odographs to take the load off.)

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  10. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 2:01 am
    24 Apr 2007

    So Long As......they can keep the dead bodies entombed in concrete out of the blades.



    The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services. http://www.you-read-it-here-first.com

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  11. Gar Lipow's avatar

    Gar Lipow Posted 3:12 am
    24 Apr 2007

    futureOne reason I mostly concentrate on current technology is because of the problems you mention. But that does not mean it is not worthwhile to look at future technology. Problems get solved; technology does advance. It is a good idea to occasionally glance at what is out there, and look at what is closest to "ready for prime time".

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  12. amazingdrx Posted 4:48 am
    24 Apr 2007

    Norwayhttp://www.e-tidevannsenergi.com/
    Maybe they have a time machine?

    http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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  13. odograph Posted 6:53 am
    24 Apr 2007

    that's greatWhat we'd ideally want to see with such a pilot program are audited multi-year maintenance records.
    California perspective again - we had a lot of small funky wind power designs put out under government subsidy in the 80's.  Many of them had the plug pulled as subsidies and tax breaks expired.  Their maintenance costs did them in.  It was only later when the larger designs (lower maintenance/kWh) rolled in that things took off.
    Test fields could have shaken out those problems at a much lower cost than premature "production."
    So certainly, let's research test and refine ... and call winners when they prove themselves.

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  14. Biodiversivist's avatar

    Biodiversivist Posted 12:12 pm
    24 Apr 2007

    I'm with Odo, Odo, and OdoHowever, premature "production" smacks of sexual innuendo.

    In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

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  15. amazingdrx Posted 9:32 pm
    24 Apr 2007

    Contrast and compareNorway can git r done.  They have a floating wind power installation too.  These pilot projects produce real data.
    The US can only talk about innovation.  And litigate endlessly, as in the cape wind project.  Some research takes place on devices that are never introduced.  Or when they are they are introduced in order to fail.  As in "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
    Why is that?

    http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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  16. caniscandida Posted 10:17 pm
    24 Apr 2007

    have no idea what "Odo!" meansbut sure, you have this skuba-kid down there all afternoon, scraping off your "beard," and finally he pops up, so you say, "Hey, laddy, come aboard, peel off that skin, and join me!  It's margarita hour, don't you know!"
    Isn't Odo the shape-changer on Deep Space Nine?

    Chickens are our cousins!

    So are other sensitive animals!

    Enough is enough!

    No more factory farms!

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  17. odograph Posted 11:32 pm
    24 Apr 2007

    odoi'm just waking up, and i'm literal when i'm just waking up.  i liked the sound of 'odograph' and it was a real word with minimal google hits (5-10 pages found?) when i picked it up.
    the good news is that my new car is monogrammed, and says "ODO" right there in the middle of the dashboard.

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