Green Energy From Manhattan's East River

circletimessquare writes "New York City's waterways are geographically unique in that they force tides from Long Island Sound down the East River in one of the most concentrated, powerful flows on the East Coast. If all goes as planned, a company called Verdant Power will build a $20 million, 10 megawatt underwater turbine field there by late 2005. The turbines spin slowly enough so that they pose no threat to wildlife (har har), are placed in spots where they do not interfere with commercial shipping, and are deep enough to not interfere with recreational boating. About the only drawback to the scheme are the supply shortage periods when the tides are slack. The New York Times has the scoop."

Comments

Reminds me of

[r.jimenezz]

There was an Ask Slashdot some months ago discussing ways to get off the grid using something like this. Whilst what the NYT article describes is certainly not for your average DIYer, some very interesting points were made in that Ask Slashdot about this form of enery generation.

Green Indeed

[twitter]

At seven cents a kilowatt-hour, that's some green power. Dollar bill green, that is. Nuclear still puts out power at under three cents a kilowatt hour and it does so 24-7. You would think it's cheaper to run a water wheel.

Re:Green Indeed

[CSharpMinor]

I would be alarmed by that article if most of it were even misleading instead of simply false.

The Price-Andersen Act simply allows the government to act as an insurance broker for nuclear power plants. The plants PAY for the insurance, and it only covers small accidents-- maximum liability for the government is something like $10 million. Furthermore, the act allows for priave companies to step in to take over the insurace after a period of some years-- something that private companies have indeed done. (The PA Act has actually made taxpayers money, as plants have paid out more than they have received, just like any successful insurance company. So it doesn't count as subsidy at all.)

As for the "$66 billion" figure, that's even worse. They mean, "The military has spent $66 billion researching nuclear reactors for their own use between 1948 and 1998."

Nuclear power does receive some subsidies, but not many-- especially compared to wind and solar, which are absolutely not cost effective. Coal, the second cheapest method of generating electricity (next to nuclear, unremarkably), receives over a billion dollars a year from the federal government just to support miners who have developed black lung disease. Oil receives billions as well. In fact, anything you can name receives more money than nuclear.

Nuclear power is not popular, and politicians know it. If nuclear power really received these nefarious subsidies, every senator in Congress would be biting at it so s/he could claim to be "fighting for safer power." Do you really think any member of Congress could pass up the chance to guarantee re-election?

(PS-- solar has some nasty hazardous waste products. The panels themselves are about as toxic as cyanide, as measured by LD50, and generous amounts of arsenic are produced as a result of the doping process of the silicon panels. Furthermore, when solar panels electromigrate, that's it-- if you try to recycle them, you end up using more energy than you got out of the panel in the first place. Those shiny toxic squares have to be thrown away.)

IANANT,BIASTGMOLAARR (Not a nuclear technician, but I am studying to get my operator's license at a research reactor.)

that's salty, definitely

[circletimessquare]

in fact, the salinity goes up to poughkeepsie (the river to your left, the hudson) a 2 hour drive away... during low rain periods, such as the summer, the salinity creeps up even higher than that, but poughkeepsie is generally considered the point where brackish water gives way to fresh water

on the right is the east river, which leads to long island sound (all ocean) and behind you, from the picture's perspective, is the atlantic ocean (all ocean)

that spot you are talking about is between the tip of manhattan and governor's island, al ocean water, all the time

10 MW and all the trouble with salt water.

[Esben]

Isn't really very much... The company I work for allready sell windtubines at 3MW. Other companies
sell even bigger ones (4.5MW I believe.)

These turbines takes a lot of manpower to keep running. Stuff needs to be repaired every month or so. I can't start to imagine the problems one would have when trying to put them down into the salty waters of East River!

But then again: One have to try and get the technology running. That was how the windturbine-buisness got started, too, and that is big buisness these days.

Re:Great Idea, but..

[Poingggg]

Sorry to disappoint you, but nuclear power also uses steam, generated by nuclear fission. I won't go into the environmental risks of nuke power, cause I will be modded troll for it (happened in earlier posts), but in the total cycle uranium and plutonium go through from mining (just uranium) to waste product, the only stage that is 'clean' is when it's used for generating electricity. Everything before and after is heavily polluting and does not even outweigh coal. Of course the nuclear industry only shows you the energy-production stage, that, indeed, is rather clean.

Re:from the pcb-heaven dept????

[WoTG]

I thought PCB's were a big pollution issue in most of the developed world? Anyway, it's a class of chemicals. Here's the wiki link: Polychlorinated biphenyl. They build up in the food chain - I think. Anyway, the Wiki article knows more than I do.

good points, except...

[circletimessquare]

that's not once but TWICE per orbit of the moon, which is ever 25 hours, so the cycle is every 12.5 hours...

but wait there's more: as mentioned in the article, the turbines swivel on their base and face the incoming tides, then swivel on their base and face the outgoing tides... so really, that's FOUR TIMES per every 25 hour tidal cycle, so that's 6 hours 15 minutes between high and low tide, the vast middle period of which the turbines are cranking away

as mentioned in the article, there's only roughly 6 hours every day when the turbines aren't moving... and those 6 hours are cut up into 4 equal pieces, equally spaced apart, in a 25 hour cycle, which means that every day, the slack periods shift an hour

so the devil's in the details, but it certainly means that this power source isn't as transitory as you initially described it, although it is still most definitely cyclical, just on a much tighter schedule than it originally appears to be

Look a little closer to home

[debest]

There is also a tidal-power plant in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. Like these ones, it was built as a test of the technology. Only it's already been around for 20 years.

It puts out 20 MW, and is on the Bay of Fundy, where you will find the truly highest tides in the world.

Re:10MW

[DAldredge]

In 2000 2.9% of generated power in the USA came from oil.

http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/2342 3. pdf

Re:10MW

[Jeremiah Blatz]

10MW won't make a dent I think, but it's a good idea as an experiment. It would be barely 1% of the capacity of one of the nuclear plants up the road.

The main problem with powering Manhattan is not the generation capacity, it's the transmission capacity. During peak load hours, the natural gas generator by my apartment kicks in. Supposedly, if the peak needs of Manhattan were generated off the island, then the wires to the island would melt.

So, power generation in Manhattan doesn't need to be super cheap or super high capacity, it really just needs to be low-pollution and moderately inexpensive. They're not competing with nuclear or coal or large hydro, they're competing with on-demand natural gas, which is nowhere near as cheap.