Energy Plan

[Kris]

January 22, 2004

Panel Offers Energy Plan for City in '08

By THOMAS J. LUECK

A mayoral task force looking into New York City's expanding energy needs said yesterday that the city would need about 25 percent more electricity by 2008. The group recommended that new power plants be built, that existing ones be retrofitted and that the process for selecting sites for plants be simplified.

The New York City Energy Policy Task Force, formed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in July, said the added electrical resources would be needed for economic expansion, to make energy prices competitive with those in other cities and to fill a void created by power plants that are mothballed. The group, headed by the city's Economic Development Corporation, includes more than a dozen utility executives, environmentalists and economic development officials. It described its recommendations as an "electricity resource road map" that would require large investments and pressure from the government and private companies.

Among the most politically sensitive questions addressed was where new power plants should be built. Although the group did not point to any specific sites, it said the city must make sure that its zoning rules provided adequate industrial parcels for new plants. The report also called on legislators in Albany to reinstate rules that expired in 2002, which streamlined the complex regulatory process required to approve the sites of new power plants. But it said the rules should also require more analysis of the how emissions affected neighborhoods, and ensure that low-income and minority communities were not singled out for new plants.

Among its recommendations to the city, the group said long-term electrical power purchasing agreements should be considered with private companies that would be contingent on the construction of new or retrofitted power plants. It said meetings should be held with developers and financial institutions aimed at providing financing for new plants and power lines. It also said that existing but outdated power plants should be retrofitted.

Gil C. Quiniones, a senior vice president of the Economic Development Corporation and chairman of the task force, said yesterday that it would issue future reports twice a year on how its recommendations are faring. In a statement, Mayor Bloomberg said the city's energy needs "are growing day by day, and we must act now to ensure that have sufficient supply of clean and reliable power."

Ashok Gupta, an official of the Natural Resources Defense Council and a member of the task force, called the report "a comprehensive and balanced blueprint for meeting future electricity needs while reducing harmful pollution."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

July 10, 2004

In Search of New Power Source, City Looks Underwater

By IAN URBINA

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/07/10/nyregion/windmill.1841.jpg
A turbine was lowered into the East River for testing.

They look like underwater windmills. And in late August, when six of them are dropped into the rapid currents of the East River alongside Roosevelt Island, these giant "tidal turbines" will begin harvesting about 150 kilowatts of electricity.

If all goes well, an entire underwater wind farm of 200 to 300 sleek 15-feet-tall turbines will discreetly spin under the surface of the river by 2006, providing about 10 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 8,000 homes.

"That will make New York City one of the greenest cities in the world when it comes to locally produced clean energy," said Trey Taylor, the owner of Verdant Power, a company in Virginia that has been given permits by the city to build the submerged turbines. "It makes sense for this city to take the lead because it has extreme energy needs and unique energy potential."

That potential rests in the distinct geography of the East Channel between Queens and Roosevelt Island. As the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean squeeze their currents down the long, narrow and steep downward slope of the East Channel, the result is a water flow of about six miles per hour, one of the fastest flows of any waterway on the East Coast. "That's a lot of kinetic energy that the city could put to use," Mr. Taylor, 56, said. The East Channel is shallow enough that large commercial ships prefer to use the side of Roosevelt Island facing Manhattan, and it is also deep enough that the turbines pose no risk to recreational boats.

"We're very optimistic about these plans," said Mr. Collins, a spokesman for New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which subsidizes promising technological projects in the state. Last year, the authority gave Verdant a $1 million grant for the project, the largest single award the agency has given to date. "The pilot tests on these structures have been incredibly positive, and things are moving forward quickly," Mr. Collins said.

The project has three stages. In December 2002, a single turbine was suspended under a barge anchored between the Queensboro Bridge and the Roosevelt Island Bridge. It operated for about 5 weeks, and the test period showed that the 8-foot propellers, which rotate only 30 revolutions per minute, were slow enough to avoid harming local aquatic life. The project's second stage starts in late August with the construction of a "six pack" of turbines that will be mounted on pilings under the water and will provide electricity to residents on Roosevelt Island, which has about 3,000 homes. The third stage, if all goes as planned, will start in the fall of 2005. For that, Verdant must get approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build a $20 million turbine field that would stretch about a third of the way across the East Channel and would extend from the Roosevelt Island Bridge to the northern tip of Roosevelt Island.

The turbines, the tops of which are about 8 feet beneath the water's surface, swivel to face the oncoming current. The rotors, which have three blades, can swing out of the water for maintenance.

The technology for the turbines is not new. But Mr. Taylor said the project was delayed when his only prototype of the turbine was lost several years ago after being sent to Pakistan for testing. "I'm still not sure how you lose a package that large," he said during a presentation to a group of engineers and city officials at the Center for Architecture near Washington Square on Thursday. "But we are back on track now so long as we can get through the remaining layers of regulatory red tape."

Dick Lutz, the editor of Roosevelt Island's newspaper, The Main Street WIRE, said residents support the project. "We live in asthma alley, so this is a huge step in the right direction," he said, explaining that many residents complain about the effects of living downwind from KeySpan Energy Corporation's Ravenswood power plant and several 10-megawatt generators belonging to New York Power Authority in Long Island City.

"How can you go wrong?" said John Catsimatidis, chief executive of Gristedes Supermarket. The Gristedes on Roosevelt Island, like the rest of the buildings there, would use electricity from the turbines. "This is a steady harvest of energy that doesn't cough pollution back onto us."

A 10-megawatt field, Mr. Taylor said, would save the city the equivalent of about 65,000 barrels of oil each year and would reduce annual carbon dioxide emissions by about 33,000 tons.

"The beauty of the project is not just that it's clean energy, but that it's local," Mr. Taylor said.

Since the electricity would not be traveling far, it would not burden an already overstretched transmission grid. It would also help bolster the city's energy supply, which is expected to run short of demand by 2009. To avoid overdependence on outside sources of energy, New York State requires that at least 80 percent of the city's electricity be generated within the five boroughs. Mr. Taylor said that while the city used 1,000 times what the 10-megawatt turbine field would produce, it is an important start.

But challenges remain. At a price of 7 cents per kilowatt-hour, the electricity from the tidal turbines is still about 2 cents above the wholesale market rate. There is also the problem of supply shortages during the six hours a day of "slack tide," when the tides cause the water to change direction, making the current too slow to turn turbines' rotors.

Mr. Taylor expects the price of tidal energy to drop as customers sign up, and he says power dips will easily be handled by using fuel-cell technology to store energy during times when the currents produce excess electricity.

"The question here is not whether there is enough energy," Mr. Taylor said. "It's how soon can we tap into it."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Gulcrapek]

That's great... I'd never heard about it.

[ZippyTheChimp]

December 11, 2005

It Never Sleeps, but It's Learned to Douse the Lights

By ANTHONY DePALMA

More than 11,000 traffic lights and "Don't Walk" signals in New York City have been switched to light-emitting diodes that use 90 percent less energy than conventional fixtures.

More than 180,000 energy-guzzling refrigerators in public housing projects have been replaced with new ones that use a quarter of the power of the old ones.

By law, the city government can now purchase only the most efficient cars, air-conditioners and copy machines, and soon, computers will be added to the list. New York has one of the largest hybrid bus fleets in the country, and some of the first hybrid taxis.

For years, New York has been the city that not only never sleeps, but the city that hardly ever remembers to turn the lights out. On the coldest days of winter, New Yorkers raise their windows to let out the heat. In the dog days of summer, a husky could freeze in the open doorway of a Fifth Avenue boutique.

But now, measures like more efficient traffic lights and refrigerators are speeding up a long trend making New York one of the most energy-efficient cities in the nation - and officials in cities like Portland and Seattle that might, in the public mind, seem more environmentally conscious are taking notice.

Environmentalists and urban planners from around the nation hail some of New York City's efforts at energy efficiency as models for doing more with less and, importantly, doing it without asking sacrifices of anyone.

"I'm not aware of any other municipalities going to that extreme," said Dana L. Banks, a senior program manager at Portland Energy Conservation Inc., which works on energy-efficiency programs throughout the Northwest. "New York is looking for every single opportunity it can to save energy it can find."

To be sure, not every one of New York's attempts to improve efficiency has succeeded. One measure to make computers more efficient became bogged down in politics and will not be put into practice until 2008. But most indications suggest that the city's wasteful reputation is changing.

"For people who look closely at energy, the idea of New York being a callous and wasteful place is long dead and buried," said David Hamilton, director of global warming and energy programs for the Sierra Club. "When it comes to following up on new ideas and new technologies and staying ahead of the curve in terms of being smart and economical, New York is clearly among the leaders in the country."

Efficiency is actually a grim necessity in New York. Despite efforts at conservation, demand for electricity in the city has been increasing by 1.5 percent a year; there simply is not enough room to build all the additional power plants that would be needed to meet unlimited demand for energy. Use has to be curtailed, and the city feels it has to lead by example.

Though the savings represent just a portion of the 5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity the entire city uses in a year, the innovation and ease of the efficiency measures have attracted attention. New York's energy diet is based on a simple formula - a blend of local legislation, state assistance and an awareness of the city's own position as an 800-pound gorilla in the energy market.

"Eventually what happens here starts to happen around the country," said Ashok Gupta, director of the air and energy program for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The market that New Yorkers provide is clearly an important factor in moving the rest of the country. That's the way markets work."

And that market dynamic helps make New York an energy efficiency laboratory. Environmental groups like the council expend much of their own energy to help shape legislation in New York because they realize that is an efficient way to kick-start national programs. Manufacturers are also attuned to New York's latest trends and needs because the market is simply too big to ignore.

"The city is such a huge consumer of these products that we should set the tone," said Councilman James F. Gennaro of Queens, chairman of the Council's Environmental Protection Committee. "We want to make New York City the most efficient entity it can be."

Sometimes energy is wasted simply because its costs are hidden. At the New York City's public housing projects, tenants do not pay for electricity; the Housing Authority does. About the biggest energy gluttons in the authority's 181,000 apartments were the old refrigerators, some of which were built in the early 1970's. But tenants did not buy them, and the Housing Authority did not control how they were used.

With help from an energy-efficiency program run by the New York Power Authority, the Housing Authority began replacing the old refrigerators several years ago with new ones that use only a quarter as much electricity. The last of them were installed early this year.

"What's different here is that we are promoting the idea of energy efficiency, using less energy and not necessarily saying that anyone has to do without," said Eugene W. Zeltman, president of the New York Power Authority. "If we use energy more wisely there will be more energy for people to consume and less energy for us to produce."

The New York Power Authority has undertaken 1,116 energy efficiency projects in New York and Westchester County, including a pilot program to adapt traffic lights to use light-emitting diodes.

The new lights are brighter, cheaper to use, and last 10 times longer than conventional fixtures. After the Power Authority helped modify the ones in Queens, the New York City Department of Transportation was so pleased with the results that it did the same in the other boroughs. By last February, the signals at all 11,600 intersections in the city had been upgraded. Installation cost $28.2 million - but the city is saving $6 million a year in energy and maintenance costs.

Earlier this year City Council passed a package of bills requiring the use of clean fuels and the purchase of energy-efficient vehicles. The city will buy substantially more hybrid cars over the next few years and must increase the fuel efficiency of its cars and trucks by 20 percent within a decade.

Just this month the Council passed a bill that would require the landlords of any building that receives a tax break to purchase only refrigerators, air-conditioners and other appliances that are certified as being efficient under the federal government's Energy Star program.

"I'm impressed with what they're doing," Steven S. Nicholas, director of Seattle's Office of Sustainability and Environment, said of New York's efforts. "They've put these issues on the radar screen."

A package of bills still before the Council would apply efficiency standards to computers the city purchases.

Chris Calwell, policy and research director for Ecos Consulting of Portland, Ore., helped the Council draft that bill to require computers use highly efficient power packs. Although the savings in individual machines would be small, the tens of thousands of computers in the city would add up to a substantial amount of wasted energy that could be captured. And less electricity means less pollution from power plants.

"The city should be commended for taking a really significant first step," Mr. Calwell said. But he said the Council gave in to pressure from the manufacturers who argued that it would take time to get the power supply manufacturers in China and Taiwan geared up to produce sufficient numbers of the new energy-efficient power packs. As a result, the deadline to put the new standards into effect was pushed back from next year to 2008.

New York is already a leader in energy-efficient green office buildings, like 7 World Trade Center, which recycles rainwater and uses it in toilets and for irrigation, and computer-controlled heating and lighting.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/michael_r_bloomberg/index.html?inline=nyt-per) wants the remaining tax-delinquent housing stock in the city's hands made available to developers with energy-saving building designs.

And the Enterprise Foundation, which encourages forward-thinking urban development, has helped provide funds for 474 energy-efficient apartments in small- and medium-scale projects in New York City, second in number only to Los Angeles.

"Counter to what most non-New Yorkers might think, New York is a very progressive city for green building," said Jim Himes, director of the Enterprise Foundation office in New York. The mass transit system, multifamily housing, mixed neighborhoods and the fact that developments never go up on virgin land anymore, all make building in New York very energy efficient.

"It's easier to be green here," Mr. Himes said.


Copyright 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html)The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[antinimby]

City faces power shortfall without new plants

by Catherine Tymkiw

New York City could face a power shortfall over the next 20 years unless new plants come on line faster and businesses spend more to boost energy efficiency, according to a report by the New York Building Congress.

Twelve new development projects scheduled for completion by 2010 will require another 175 megawatts of power -- enough to supply 175,000 homes. Among them are Brooklyn’s Atlantic Yards project, a new Path station in Lower Manhattan and the first phase of the development of Manhattan’s west side.

If new power plants and transmission lines are not up and running, the city could start feeling the power pinch as early as 2010, according to the Building Congress, a group of contractors, developers, architects and engineers.

The pinch could worsen by 2025, when city employment is expected to rise by 21% and population is expected to grow 16% from 2002 levels.

The expiration of the state’s licensing process law in 2002 means there is no approval mechanism for plants and it takes at least four years for a new facility to get up and running, according to the Building Congress.

The completion of a Con Edison’s East River project added 125 megawatts last year and another 1,000 megawatts are expected from the completion of two plants in Astoria. Two other projects in Astoria to add 1,000 megawatts went through the approval process but are currently stalled because of financing issues. Plants accounting for 6,000 megawatts will be at least 45 years old by 2025, the report said.

©2005 Crain Communications Inc.

[antinimby]

Con Edison To Spend $1.2B on Reliable Power

by David Jones

Consolidated Edison Inc. said it will spend more than $1.2 billion this year to upgrade the power grid in New York City and Westchester County.

Con Edison said that electrical usage has jumped 20% over the past 10 years in the service area, and that customers are powering up more cell phones, computer equipment, televisions and other electrical equipment.

The Manhattan-based utility forecast a peak load of 13,400 megawatts for the service area, including 11,630 megawatts for the city and 1,770 megawatts for Westchester. One megawatt can power about 1,000 homes.

Last year, New York City had one of the hottest summers on record, forcing the utility to use more than 18.7 million megawatts of electricity between June and August of last year, which is enough to power Vermont, Rhode Island and Alaska for an entire year.

"Summer energy supplies are adequate to keep pace with this growing demand, but conserving energy every day is still the smartest way to manage your energy use and costs," said Marilyn Caselli, senior vice president of customer operations for Con Edison.

The utility is spending $657 million on the distribution system, including $260 million to upgrade cables and transformers and $114 million for new business growth.

Con Edison is spending $415 million on substation-related projects, including $260 million for new substations, transformers and circuit breakers and $126 million for transmission upgrades.

As part of the upgrade, the utility is installing 16 miles of high-voltage transmission cables and replacing 153 miles of underground and overhead cable.

Con Edison Chairman Kevin Burke told investors at the company's annual meeting on May 15 that the utility would spend $5.3 billion over the next three years to strengthen the company's infrastructure.

©2006 Crain Communications Inc. (http://www.newyorkbusiness.com/news.cms?id=13778)

[lofter1]

So that's what the Con Ed crews have been doing with jack hammers / back hoes and all that pipe on my block for the last 8 nights from 10 PM - 6 AM :mad:

[Kris]

June 26, 2006
Energy Needs Not as Urgent as Anticipated, City Says
By DIANE CARDWELL

The city will be able to meet its growing power needs for at least four years longer than originally anticipated, potentially delaying the need for new power plants until 2012, according to a Bloomberg administration report to be released today.

Two years ago, a task force examining the energy supply concluded that the city would need about 25 percent more electricity by 2008 and recommended steps to meet that need, including building new power plants, which generally spark fierce opposition in the neighborhoods where they are to be located. The increased electrical resources would be needed, the panel said, for economic expansion, to make energy prices competitive with those in other cities and to fill a void created by plants that are mothballed.

But after putting in place measures to conserve energy and to make its production more efficient, the New York City Energy Policy Task Force is reporting, based on a Con Edison study, that no additional resources will be needed until at least 2012, and perhaps as late as 2014.

"It's not that we don't have to deal with this anymore but now we can plan for our future needs in a thoughtful way," said Gil C. Quiniones, a senior vice president of the Economic Development Corporation and chairman of the task force. "We really need a combination of solutions."

The city's population growth and construction boom have increased the demand for power, a trend that is expected to intensify as enormous new developments take shape, including those on the Far West Side of Manhattan, around ground zero and along the Brooklyn waterfront.

Responding to that need, the task force, created by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2003 and comprising more than a dozen utility executives, environmentalists and economic development officials, issued 28 recommendations the next year.

The recommendations included building new power plants, retrofitting existing ones, simplifying the processes for locating and financing them and making sure the city's zoning rules provided sufficient industrial land to accommodate the plants.

As the city is continuing those efforts, it is also pursuing ways to minimize the need for them.

One strategy has focused on upgrading and expanding existing plants. Since the task force's 2004 report, three projects fueled by natural gas, a cleaner form of energy, have been completed, including two new plants and one that has been upgraded.

The city is also looking into ways to tap excess power from upstate New York and from New Jersey, which are able to generate more energy than those areas need.

In addition, working with Con Edison, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, the task force has begun a program to encourage conservation.

Aimed at lowering demand to reduce the risk of a system shutdown, that program includes offering consumers money if they cut back temporarily on electricity when use is highest.

The program also offers incentives to residents and developers to install systems and equipment that are energy efficient. Officials expect the program to save the equivalent of what a large power plant could generate, Mr. Quiniones said.

"It doesn't only defer the need for a power plant but creates environmental benefits and a reduction in power prices," he said. "It is important that we have sufficient and reliable power because it enables our growth and economic development."

The city has also enacted legislation requiring that its own new buildings meet higher environmental standards, and is pushing private developers to include so-called green strategies in their designs as well.

According to city officials, the Economic Development Corporation and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development are working on environmentally conscious development proposals worth more than $2.5 billion.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[Edward]

Watts Up, Doc?

New York Sun Staff Editorial
August 16, 2006
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/38038

Quite a fury is erupting over a proposal to build a 200-mile electric transmission line to Orange County from Utica, and a lot is at stake for New York City. The line's developers hope their project will be finished by 2011, at which point it would ferry 1,200 megawatts to the electricity-starved city from electricity-rich upstate. That would be one year after experts predict the city will start experiencing a power shortage that will eventually require as much as 7,000 megawatts of new capacity to overcome. Already this summer, city residents have gained a taste of what life is like when they can't depend on the power grid. Now the question is, what are their politicians going to do about it?

So far, the answer turns out to be not much. New York City has an electric Achilles' heel — there isn't enough transmission capacity into the city. So by law the city has to produce 80% of the electricity it consumes within the five boroughs. Most of that in-city production comes from generators burning coal or natural gas, since renewable alternatives like wind and hydropower aren't feasible options. It's a lose-lose-lose situation for city residents and businesses. Prices are high because supply is chronically tight, prices have been even higher of late thanks to the increased cost of coal and natural gas, and city residents have to put up with the pollution the plants generate.

While it may not be possible, or even necessarily desirable, to import all of the city's electricity any time soon, New Yorkers would benefit from an energy strategy that provided for more easily importing some electricity. The New York Regional Interconnection might prove to be part of such a strategy. It would provide relief along what the Department of Energy just last week described as one of the most critically congested electric corridors in the country, increasing reliability and decreasing electric costs for consumers.

The line's proponents calculate that, by increasing available supply into the lower Hudson region, the project would save New York City electric customers about $11 billion over 20 years as market forces drove down the prices on more readily available electrons. Such a line would also provide new incentives for investors to develop plants elsewhere in the state since it would be easier for them to get their product into the city market. Even as the city struggles to power itself today, many upstate generators operate below capacity because there isn't anywhere to sell their juice.

The NYRI project is still in the early days of its permitting process. It's not too soon to say, however, that it's especially intriguing because its developers claim they will privately finance its entire cost and pay property taxes to upstate communities. So why are politicians unwilling to touch the project with a 10-foot utility pole? Senators Clinton and Schumer are hiding behind calls for more studies. Eliot Spitzer is on the fence, while John Faso is outright opposed. Only Mayor Bloomberg has voiced any sort of support for the project, although even then it has been in the form of calling on the governor to veto legislation designed to kill NYRI outright.

Whatever the merits, this project is putting pressure on politicians to develop an electricity strategy for the city. Mr. Faso is has the closest to such a plan in the governor's race, having pointed out the folly of Mr. Spitzer's plan to close the Indian Point nuclear plant that currently provides about 11% of the city's electricity. While Mr. Faso announced opposition to NYRI, he called for more generating capacity to be built near where the power is needed. That can only be part of a power plan. The race is on for a candidate — and a senator — who understands that part of the solution to New York's electric shortage will require standing up for private upstate companies that want to invest in a system to deliver more power into the city.

[antinimby]

June 26, 2006
Energy Needs Not as Urgent as Anticipated, City Says
By DIANE CARDWELL

The city will be able to meet its growing power needs for at least four years longer than originally anticipated, potentially delaying the need for new power plants until 2012, according to a Bloomberg administration report to be released today...Noticed this report came out before this past summer's black out. So much for the credibility of these reports. :rolleyes:

I swear, if the city had endured even an extra day of 90+ degree heat during that heatwave, the city would have been in trouble.

They were issuing requests to everyone to reduce unnecessary power usage.

We were literally on the brink of a city-wide black out.

They definitely need to do something before next summer.

A world-class city shouldn't be handcuffed by an inadequate power supply.

[Strattonport]

That's why ConEd's always "On It." [/badjoke]

[antinimby]

Tidal energy companies staking claims


By JEANNETTE J. LEE, Associated Press Writer
Fri Nov 3, 6:35 PM ET (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061103/ap_on_sc/ocean_power)


ANCHORAGE, Alaska - In the quest for oil-free power, a handful of small companies are staking claims on the boundless energy of the rising and ebbing sea.

The technology that would draw energy from ocean tides to keep light bulbs and laptops aglow is largely untested, but several newly minted companies are reserving tracts of water from Alaska's Cook Inlet to Manhattan's East River in the belief that such sites could become profitable sources of electricity.

The trickle of interest began two years ago, said Celeste Miller, spokeswoman for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The agency issues permits that give companies exclusive rights to study the tidal sites. Permit holders usually have first dibs on development licenses.

Tidal power proponents liken the technology to little wind turbines on steroids, turning like windmills in the current. Water's greater density means fewer and smaller turbines are needed to produce the same amount of electricity as wind turbines.

After more than two decades of experimenting, the technology has advanced enough to make business sense, said Carolyn Elefant, co-founder of the Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition, a marine energy lobbying group formed in May 2005.

In the last four years, the federal commission has approved nearly a dozen permits to study tidal sites. Applications for about 40 others, all filed in 2006, are under review. No one has applied for a development license, Miller said.

The site that is furthest along in testing lies in New York's East River, between the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, where Verdant Power plans to install two underwater turbines this month as part of a small pilot project.

Power from the turbines will be routed to a supermarket and parking garage on nearby Roosevelt Island.

Verdant co-founder and President Trey Taylor said the six-year-old company will spend 18 months studying the effects on fish before putting in another four turbines.

The project will cost more than $10 million, including $2 million on fish monitoring equipment, Taylor said.

"It's important to spend this much initially," Taylor said. "It's like our flight at Kitty Hawk. It puts us on a path to commercialization and we think eventually costs will fall really fast."

If all goes well, New York-based Verdant could have up to 300 turbines in the river by 2008, Taylor said. The turbines would produce as much as 10 megawatts of power, or enough electricity for 8,000 homes, he said.

With 12,380 miles of coastline, the U.S. may seem like a wide-open frontier for the fledgling industry, but experts believe only a few will prove profitable.

The ideal sites are close to a power grid and have large amounts of fast-moving water with enough room to build on the sea floor while staying clear of boat traffic.

"There are thousands of sites, but only a handful of really, really good ones," said Roger Bedard of the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit organization in Palo Alto, Calif., that researches energy and the environment.

"If you're sitting on top of the best scallop fishing in the world, you can't put these things down there," said Chris Sauer, president of Ocean Renewable Power Co. in Miami. The two-year-old company is awaiting approval for federal study permits in Cook Inlet and Resurrection Bay in Alaska, and Cobscook Bay and the St. Croix River in Maine.

Other prime tidal energy sites lie beneath San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and in Knik Arm near Anchorage, Bedard said.

Government and the private sector in Europe, Canada and Asia have moved faster than their U.S. counterparts to support tidal energy research. As of June 2006, there were small facilities in Russia, Nova Scotia and China, as well as a 30-year-old plant in France, according to a report by EPRI.


"I expect the first real big tidal plant in North America is going to be built in Nova Scotia," said Bedard, who led the study. "They have the mother of all tidal passages up there."

The industry is coalescing over worries about dependence on foreign oil, volatile oil prices and global warming. Many states have passed laws requiring a certain percentage of energy from renewable sources, and tidal entrepreneurs believe they will be looking to diversify beyond wind and solar power.

Elefant said the industry is still trying to figure out how much energy it will be able to supply from tides, as well as waves.

"While ocean energy may not power everything in the U.S., it will be functioning in tandem with other renewable resources and supplement other sea-based technologies," said Elefant, a lawyer in Washington D.C. "The most important thing is for the nation to invest in a diverse energy supply."

In the United States, wave energy technology is less advanced than tidal and will need more government subsidies, Bedard said, however, the number of good wave sites far exceeds that of tidal. Wave power collection involves cork or serpent-like devices that absorb energy from swells on the ocean's surface, whereas tidal machines sit on the sea floor.

Tidal energy technology has been able to build on lessons learned from wind power development, while wave engineers have had to start virtually from scratch, Bedard said. But a few companies are working aggressively to usher wave power into the energy industry.

Aqua Energy, could start building a wave energy plant at Makah Bay in Washington state within two years, said Chief Executive Officer Alla Weinstein. Another wave plant, whose backers include major Norwegian energy company Norsk Hydro ASA, is under construction off the coast of Portugal.

Miller said the commission has received applications for three wave energy permits in Oregon, all filed since July.
With the uptick in interest in tidal and wave energy sites, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is holding a public meeting in Washington on Dec. 6 to discuss marine energy technologies. The meeting can be viewed on the commission's Web site.

[clubBR]

http://www.wnyc.org/img/76671/0 Dean Corren of Verdant Power with a model of a tidal turbine (Patricia Willens/WNYC)

Tidal Power: Can the East River Generate Electricity?

by Beth Fertig




NEW YORK, NY April 05, 2007 —Approximately 14 percent of all electrical power in New York State comes from hydropower. Many environmentalists believe that figure should be higher. They see hydropower as a way of reducing our reliance on the fossil fuels that contribute to global warming. In our ongoing series on how the New York region is preparing for climate change, WNYC’s Beth Fertig looks at one small company that’s now experimenting with a new form of hydro-electric power right in the East River.
REPORTER: It doesn’t look like much from here on Roosevelt Island. But this narrow slice of the East River directly opposite Queens could be a powerful form of energy.
CORREN: You have first of all a big fast river, you have to have fast currents, that’s what it’s all about, it’s embedded in civilization not middle of arctic or something.
REPORTER: Dean Corren is Director of Technology Development for Verdant Power.
MAN: Hey, you guys want to put some ropes on the next one?
REPORTER: He and his engineers are getting ready to harness the strength of this tidal estuary with the help of turbines.
CORREN: All of us, our team together, has built six turbines to go underwater here that capture the kinetic energy of the flowing water without any dams. They’re sort of like underwater windmills. And as the tide goes in and the tide goes out, the flood and the ebb, they capture some of the energy and convert it directly to electricity
REPORTER: Electricity that can be used to power homes and businesses. On a bright sunny morning, recently, Corren’s team stood on the shoreline while a barge delivered equipment that could only be installed during a slack tide.
CORREN: When the tide stops we gotta go. We can only do this stuff when water’s not running.
REPORTER: As he descended a ladder to the water’s edge, a huge crane was taking four white rectangular frames off the barge and gently laying them in the water.
Each frame is about 20 feet long and contains three ultrasonic devices. They were especially designed for observing fish. Verdant can’t get a permit until it proves to state and federal agencies that the turbines won’t hurt migrating wildlife. But Corren predicts that shouldn’t be a problem.
http://www.wnyc.org/__imageversions.py?item_id=76689&revision=0A barge drops off sonar devices, mounted on a large frame, for monitoring how turbines affect East River fish
CORREN: The turbines actually turn very slowly. They’re five meters in diameter - that’s 16.4 feet - and they turn at about 34 RPM. Quite stately is my term for it. Also leading edges are very rounded and blunt. Also the inner part turns very slowly. So there’s only a very small area that could actually hurt fish if they were to hit it.
REPORTER: And those tests are just beginning. In a former shipping container that’s been turned into a control room, Verdant has spent several months already studying the habits of East River wildlife. Analyst Hannah Abend uses her computer to look at underwater images captured by a different sonar device last year.
ABEND: So I’m going to show you example of what a school of fish looked like before the turbine was actually in the water.
REPORTER: Verdant conducted a test run with a single turbine back in December. Abend says she saw a few herrings, a striped bass and a cormorant. But they stayed away from the turbine – which was located about a quarter of the way out in the river.
ABEND: One of the interesting things I’ve discovered from analyzing all of this data is that generally the fish hang around the rocks, they hang around during slack tide when the turbine isn’t moving at all because water really quiet. They don’t like fast currents. They also don’t hang out that fa,r they like the safety of the rocks. And so this bodes very well for having turbines in river environments like this.
REPORTER: The test turbine operated for more than a month, until engineers discovered a problem with its blade. In that month Verdant says it generated about 8000 kilowatt hours during active tide cycles – enough to power a couple of homes for a year. The electricity was used by the Gristedes supermarket on Roosevelt Island – proving the East River could generate power. Verdant’s founders compare that to the flight of the Kitty Hawk because tidal power is still in its infancy.
Alternative forms of hydropower were first explored in the 1970s. But they were abandoned when the energy crisis ended. Now that global warming has triggered a new interest in renewable, clean sources of energy, researchers in Europe and the United States are once again experimenting with tidal power. But there’s a big obstacle.
THRESHER: It’s a lot easier to do things on land than it is in the water.
REPORTER: The turbines may LOOK like windmills. But they’re actually much more complicated, according to Robert Thresher, director of the National Wind and Technology Center in Denver, Colorado.
THRESHER: You have to get out there, you have to have boats, you have to have crews, if you’re going to put a foundation in, you can’t just dig a hole with a back hoe and pour in foundation. It’s more complicated than that. So just working in the water is more complicated even in rivers or tidal streams. And then if you’re in estuary you have salt water, which is a corrosion issue that you just don’t have with wind turbines.
REPORTER: That’s not to say it isn’t possible. Thresher is a big proponent of alternative sources of energy, and he says tidal power is definitely viable. Unlike wind, tides are predictable because they come in cycles. It’s just going to take more research… and more money.
Verdant says it’s spending more than 6 million dollars on the East River project. A third of that money alone is going toward the fish monitoring, and other regulatory and permitting issues. Hannah Abend and her coworkers envision a day when a couple of hundred turbines off the coast of Roosevelt Island could generate enough power for up to five thousand homes. And since they only depend on the moon and the tides, she says these turbines could be part of a whole mix of power plants that use nature to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
ABEND: I would love to see this type of power plant in place where you can have distributed energy, a solar field, a wind field, an underwater tidal field to power up local communities, to power up - if you’re in rural area and you have water supplies this is a way to get power as well. It really opens up the possibilities for different sources of power and greener sources of power.
REPORTER: Verdant power is scheduled to deploy a total of six turbines later this month for testing – just as bass migration begins. The company is also applying for permits to test in Long Island sound. If the company can prove it can successfully generate power without hurting wildlife, New York may find a whole new use for its waterways. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.

[clubBR]

East River becomes a green zone

By COLLEEN LONG
NEW YORK




The murky waterways around the city aren't exactly what spring to mind at the mention of an environmentally friendly location.
Cesspool, perhaps. Or rumored resting place of countless mobsters. But not a green zone.
The state thinks otherwise. New York and a Virginia-based company have partnered to use the East River as the staging ground for a unique experiment in renewable energy. They are placing six windmills underwater on the east side of Roosevelt Island to harness kinetic energy in the tides to produce electricity -- without having to dam the water.
As the river's current rotates the giant turbines, the energy is converted into electricity that is powering a grocery store and a garage on Roosevelt Island. One of the turbines is already in operation, and five more are being installed in the next two weeks as part of the $7 million project.
"We're looking for the most cost-effective way to get the most energy out of moving water while having a positive impact on the environment," said Verdant Power President Trey Taylor.
The technology is based on the same principles of hydropower and wind power. Wind energy uses turbines that harness drafts of air which is converted to power, and dams use the kinetic energy in moving water. The East River turbines resemble windmills, but were specially crafted to move with river currents.
Project organizers say it's the first time the concept has been used in the U.S.
Taylor started work on the effort about eight years ago, and is in a final, 18-month testing phase. The regulations governing such projects here are stringent, but Taylor hopes that will show the project can succeed anywhere.
"We picked New York on purpose, because the regulations are so strict, and also because the East River is a tidal strait, there is a high current," Taylor said. "You know what they say about New York. If you can make it here ... "
One downside to the technology is that there isn't always a current, so on average, the turbines rotate enough to generate electricity about 77 percent of the time. At full capacity, the 10-megawatt project could power as much as 10,000 homes.
It may not seem like much, but it's a step in the right direction, environmentalists say. The U.S. gets most its power from coal-fired plants, then natural gas and hydropower. Offshore wind farms have been growing in popularity around the country, but they frequently run into opposition.
"The biggest source of power is burning oil, coal and all of that," Taylor said. "That contributes to greenhouse gases, and in a city where this many people live, the idea of having a clean energy source is a real appeal."
New York City released a report this week saying that it produces nearly 1 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions.
Naturally there are environmental concerns with the project, chiefly, sediment changes and damage to fish populations. The river isn't quite the cesspool it was 30 years ago, and is home to striped bass, herring, smelt and sturgeon. Many fish species travel between the ocean and the river, and if the turbines alter the behavior, it could dramatically affect fisheries.
Taylor said the fish near the turbines are being monitored using sonar equipment, and the river bottom is mostly bedrock, so no sediment is being kicked up by the rotation. Commercial boats do not use that section of the river, so the shipping industry is not affected by the project.
Environmental groups would like to see a year's worth of data before deciding whether the turbines have any significant effects on the water, but so far, they are pleased.
"The idea that it is renewable energy is a really good thing," said Robert Goldstein, an attorney for the environmental group Riverkeeper. "They seem to be acting very careful, and moving forward in a responsible way."
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority has funded nearly $2 million to help with the cost of design and environmental testing, and has high hopes for the project.
"We've had some blade failures, but we've already gotten back some great test results," said Ray Hull, spokesman for authority. "This could be a significant advance in renewable energy."
Hull said the economics are hard to ignore, too.
"During high tide periods in July and August, when there is such a demand for power, this could be pretty good stuff, financially speaking."
If more power is available, there's a lower chance of suffering through another summer of disastrous blackouts. A 2006 blackout in Queens affected more than 100,000 people and Con Edison has been under pressure to come up with a plan to avoid similar problems.
Taylor is thinking bigger. He eventually hopes to outsource manufacturing to assembly plants, and form joint partnerships with city energy suppliers, like Keyspan. He wants to place the technology in U.S. rivers like the St. Lawrence or Mississippi, and around the world.
"There are so many people that don't have access to electricity around the world," he said. "But many live near running water."

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8OFRDTG1.htm

[NYatKNIGHT]

East River Fights Bid to Harness Its Currents for Electricity

By ANTHONY DePALMA
Published: August 13, 2007

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/08/13/nyregion/Turbine600.jpg
Crews lowered an electricity-generating turbine into the East River in December. Six were installed, but they have been shut down for repairs.

From the eastern edge of Roosevelt Island, the past and perhaps the future of New York power are on display.
Just south of the Roosevelt Island Bridge to Queens rise the smokestacks of KeySpan’s giant Ravenswood electricity generating station, a behemoth that runs on natural gas and fuel oil.

North of the bridge, black cables snake out of the churning surface of the East River. They connect a makeshift control room inside an old shipping container on the island to a battery of futuristic mechanisms that could shape an energy future that does not pollute or use foreign oil — if a five-year-old company named Verdant Power can work out all the bugs.

Weeks after they were formally dedicated by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, six underwater turbines that turn the river’s currents into electricity have been shut down for repairs and a basic redesign. The East River’s powerful tides have been wreaking havoc with the giant turbine blades since the first two were installed in December.

“But the good thing is that there’s more power in the East River than we thought,” said Mollie E. Gardner, a geologist for Verdant Power, which owns the equipment.

This is the reality of new energy projects, which often seem more attractive on paper than they do in practice. Verdant’s principals, along with the state officials who have supported the project with large grants, say the setback is only temporary, even expected — a way to work out the kinks before moving onto the next, expanded phase.

Despite a string of mishaps that has taken a bit of the luster off the project, there is still sufficient optimism about tidal power to attract investments, and even some old-fashioned competition.

It has been a rough eight months for Verdant. Days after the first two turbines were lowered into the water, the East River’s powerful currents sheared off the tips of several blades about a third of the way down.

New blades were ordered, made of a cast aluminum that theoretically would hold up better. They replaced the ones that were broken, and were also installed on four more turbines that were lowered into the river’s eastern channel earlier this year.

Together, the turbines were capable of producing about 1,000 kilowatt hours a day of clean electricity. But the East River tides have proved too formidable even for the stronger blades, putting excessive strain on the bolts that hold them to the turbine hubs.

To keep them from coming apart, all six of the 20-foot-tall mechanisms, which resemble ship propellers on masts, have been shut down for repairs and may not be back in operation until November.

“The only way for us to learn is to get the turbines into the water and start breaking them,” said Trey Taylor, the habitually optimistic founder of Verdant Power.

From the surface of the river, there is no sign that anything has gone wrong. The Gristedes supermarket and the Roosevelt Island Motorgate parking garage, which were being powered with electricity generated by the turbines, have not gone dark. They are still plugged into the city’s traditional electricity grid and may well be receiving electricity generated at the old Ravenswood plant across the river.

While KeySpan is the largest distributor of natural gas in the Northeast, it is also the largest privately owned generator of electricity in New York State, and its Ravenswood station provides about 25 percent of New York City’s electricity needs.

KeySpan also has taken an interest in its upstart neighbor. The corporation has entered into a strategic partnership with Verdant to pursue tidal energy.

The idea of generating electricity by harnessing the power of a flowing river — called hydrokinetic energy — is attracting growing attention.

Basically, the East River turns the turbines’ blades as it flows past. The turbines, like windmills, generate electricity that is channeled through wires to a central control unit and from there to the existing electricity grid.
Hydro turbines have a few advantages over windmills. While winds are erratic, tides can be charted by the minute, which allows power companies to know exactly when the turbines will be generating power.

Verdant chose the East River because it is fast-flowing and is close to where the energy it produces would be used. The East River’s unique character also played a role. The river’s tide changes direction each day, flowing north and then turning around and pushing toward the ocean.

But just before the tide shifts, there is a window of about 45 minutes of calm that allows Verdant to install, repair or tweak its turbines.
The turbines — five generate electricity and one houses the dynamometer that measures water rotational speed — have been installed on the bottom of a narrow strip of the river’s eastern channel. Commercial traffic continues to use the remainder of the east channel and the deeper, more navigable western channel.

Mr. Taylor said that despite the difficulties, the East River project has generated about 7,100 kilowatt hours of electricity, which he said was a world record for hydrokinetic power. The turbines operated, on average, about 17 hours a day until they were shut down this summer.

The project has received about $2.5 million in support from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, an agency that promotes energy alternatives.

Paul D. Tonko, president of the authority, said that the technical problems had not been a major concern and that he was satisfied with Verdant’s progress. An analysis of the project’s early production record indicates that Verdant is producing energy for about 7 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour, he said, slightly higher than traditional sources at current prices for natural gas and fuel oil.

Once the project is fully developed — Verdant plans to install as many as 300 turbines in the East River — it could generate enough electricity to power more than 8,000 homes and compete head-to-head with traditional sources, Mr. Taylor said.

But a few obstacles still stand in the way. Mr. Taylor said the company has had to spend more than $2 million to study the impact that the turbines might have on fish in the East River. The water is monitored 24 hours a day with sonar equipment to see whether fish are harmed by the blades, which move at a comparatively languid 32 revolutions per minute.

The company has found that the few fish who are picked up by the sonar tend to swim around the blades.

“So far, there haven’t been any strikes,” said Ms. Gardner, the geologist who works for Verdant.

Still, federal regulators want Verdant to conduct studies on species like sturgeon and some turtles that are rarely seen in the East River.

“For a start-up company, this is getting pretty hard,” Mr. Taylor said. Verdant is also facing the prospect of competition — not so much from giants like KeySpan but from other alternative energy start-ups. One company, Oceana Energy, recently was granted a federal permit to install turbines in the East River just north of Roosevelt Island.

Mr. Taylor’s company had accused Oceana of intending to simply hold the permit until it became more valuable. John C. Topping Jr., an Oceana founder, said the company is developing its turbine technology. It has about a dozen sites, including one in San Francisco and several in Alaska.

“Our preliminary studies of the East River make it look very promising,” Mr. Topping said. “Our project is not going to detract at all from the other.”
Verdant recently withdrew its protest of Oceana’s permit application, deciding instead to focus on fine-tuning its own technology. And it expects that competitors will be surprised when they try to lasso the wild waters where the East River enters the area known as Hell Gate, between Wards Island and Astoria, Queens.

“I wish them the best of luck,” Ms. Gardner said.

Multimedia

Video: Electricity from the East River (http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=4c02dafea83d127922cb50e6bfbc38f1483512e1 )

Video: Tidal Turbines (http://nytimes.feedroom.com/?fr_story=a16561a2d9322a0e5953813fd7c930aa6fd8e41e )

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/nyregion/13power.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin

[brianac]

A Futuristic Energy Plan, 100 Years in the Making

By JIM DWYER (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/jim_dwyer/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: August 22, 2008

In the century to come, The New York World imagined 100 years ago, gyroscopic trains might travel at fantastic speed, there could be wireless phones in every pocket, and the world “may have aeroplanes winging the once inconquerable air.”

And there was also this simple, obvious thought: New York, city of islands, rivers and shoreline, could draw its power from the water. “The tides that ebb and flow to waste may take the place of our spent coal and flash their strength by wire to every point of need,” The World wrote in its issue of Jan. 1, 1908.

So that’s a century of prophecy realized, in fast trains and telephones everywhere and everyday air travel.

But energy from the tides?

Over the next two weeks, a third generation of experimental turbines will be installed in the waters of the East River off Roosevelt Island.

Imagine a field of windmills, but underwater. Instead of making power only when the wind blows, they would run according to the tide charts, as predictable as the phases of the moon. The East River — not a real river, but a tidal strait connecting Long Island Sound to Upper New York Bay — is famous for currents so strong that sailboats must wait for the tide to turn in their favor.

Those currents ate up the first two generations of turbines, installed by Verdant Power, a small private company, in late 2006 and early 2007. The only way inventors can make anything work is to see how it doesn’t work.

And in the saga of the East River turbines, there is already a sharp lesson on the risks of giving up too soon.

For centuries, people have used river power to run mills, to turn water wheels and to make electricity. True rivers run in only one direction. To capture the power of the East (Not Really a) River, all three generations of the Verdant turbines have been designed so that they are automatically swung by the tide and always face the current, whichever direction it is running. They sit on piles drilled into the riverbed, and at low tide are six feet below the surface. Power cables carry electricity onto Roosevelt Island.

The original turbine blades were fiberglass stretched over a steel skeleton.
“They broke on the first deployment,” said Dean Corren, the director of technology for Verdant.

New blades were fabricated from aluminum magnesium, and they held up well, but the flowing water found the next weak point in the machines, along the rotors, or hubs. These snapped within two months. During their limited operation last year, the turbines provided enough power to run a supermarket and light a garage.

Now, Mr. Corren said, the aluminum alloy blades, fixed to rotors that have been tested for strength in a federal laboratory, will go into the water beginning on Monday.

Mr. Corren began thinking about harnessing tides nearly 30 years ago. A philosophy major who graduated from college in 1977, he moved to the city to attend a new master’s degree program in energy science at New York University (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/new_york_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org). After the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the federal government was pumping money into research.

At N.Y.U., Mr. Corren said, “we worked on every type of renewable energy you could imagine.” The department had a wind tunnel in the East Village and a rich array of testing and shop equipment. Mr. Corren stayed at the university as a senior research scientist and began to think of how a tidal turbine would work.

By 1985, Mr. Corren had a patent for a design and a full-scale model.

After long negotiations with the city, Mr. Corren and his colleagues won permission to test the model in the East River, near the bridge that connects Roosevelt Island to Queens.

By then, though, the oil embargo was long over. The price of energy was dropping quickly. Research funding for alternatives dwindled.

“N.Y.U. decided it didn’t want to do these kinds of projects anymore and ultimately got rid of the department,” Mr. Corren said. “They threw away a wind tunnel, all kinds of testing, and shop equipment.”

A United Nations (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org) official shipped the working model to Pakistan, but some of the equipment was stolen or disappeared, so there was no data to show investors that the thing worked.

Mr. Corren put it aside for 15 years. Then he heard from people who had set up Verdant in an effort to build smaller generators, closer to the users, as an alternative to the big power plants that deliver electricity over long distances and jammed grids.

Trey Taylor, a co-founder of Verdant, said he had read about the work done at N.Y.U. and tracked down Mr. Corren.

“We look at our technology like the Wright brothers,” Mr. Taylor said.
There are years of experiments to come. But so what? “We’re failing better all the time,” Mr. Corren said.

E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/nyregion/23about.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin

Copyright 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)