"Dams highly disrupt rivers and surrounding ecosystems."
The hydrokinetic system will most likely depend on the existence of dams.
Without the pool behind the dam, the turbines might find themselves above the surface during the dry season. It would be like a wind farm when the wind isn't blowing.
And the energy won’t come from damming up the rivers, but by letting them flow—the faster, the better—via in-stream hydrokinetic energy.
If made law, Louisiana Senate Bill 183 would let the state rent out land—in this case, river space—for the development of renewable energy. The bill has passed the Senate and now awaits the House.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted Free Flow Power (FFP) 60 preliminary permits in 2008 to test sections of the rivers, where the currents are strong and consistent, to submerge slow-spinning turbines.
Free Flow Power’s almost 10-foot turbines are meant to sit passively in the river, generating about 10 kilowatts in 7.4-feet-per-second flows and 40 kilowatts in 10-feet-per-second currents.
Last week, the Associated Press quotes FFP’s Jon Guidroz:
The U.S. has never developed its own form of renewable electricity. We have an extraordinary river resource no one else has…This is an opportunity the United States has never had.
In the upper stretches of the Mississippi, Hydro Green Energy launched in August the country’s first licensed, commercial in-stream hydrokinetic project north of Hastings, Minnesota. This energy system sits downstream from a more traditional hydropower operation, a dam (the Army Corps of Engineers Lock and Dam No. 2). Dams highly disrupt rivers and surrounding ecosystems.
With in-stream turbines, one impact that comes to mind is whether they fillet the fish swimming through them.
According to a report released and conducted by Hydro Green Energy in January, fish passing through their turbine had a 97 percent survival rate. The company is also planning a project at the Amory Lock and Dam on the Tennessee-Timbigbee river.
Images: Free Flow Power (top) and Hydro Green Energy (bottom)
Via: IEEE Spectrum
