In Quest for River’s Power, an Underwater Test Spin

September 11, 2012

By PATRICK McGEEHAN

NY Times

Could cars in New York City someday run on electricity generated at the bottom of the East River?

Trey Taylor thinks so, but first he and his associates have to build a better turbine — specifically, one that can withstand the river’s strong and shifting currents. On Tuesday afternoon they moved one step closer to their goal, as a crane hoisted what looked like a giant, hand-held electric fan from the riverbed east of Roosevelt Island.

The turbine — its three white blades were still turning as they broke the surface — had been bolted for 10 days to a piling drilled into the bedrock beneath the river. Mr. Taylor’s company, Verdant Power, had positioned it there in the latest test of its long-running plan to turn the tides into a source of electricity.

“This is the perfect testing ground,” said Dean Corren, the company’s director of technology, as he watched two divers descend from a barge on a ladder and attach a sling to the turbine. The current, which runs as fast as 2 meters per second, keeps the blades spinning slowly, except during the lulls when the tide reverses its flow from north to south, or back again.

The turbine, a commercial prototype with a diameter of more than 16 feet, did not generate any electricity during its brief period of submersion. A previous set of turbines in the river powered a Gristede’s supermarket and an adjacent parking garage on the island, Mr. Taylor said.

The problem with those machines was that they kept breaking, he said. So, the company commissioned the manufacture of stronger blades, made of layered fiberglass and plastic, and tested them first in a lab in Golden, Colo.

After 10 days in the river, the blades gleamed in the September sunlight, showing no obvious signs of wear or damage. The turbine’s pristine appearance brought smiles to the faces of Mr. Corren and his colleagues. Dean Whatmoor, a logistics manager, who had been monitoring the test from a converted cargo container filled with computer screens and gauges, admitted that he was a little sad to see the test end.

The next step will be to start building more turbines and installing them in the river in sets of three, Mr. Taylor said. The rotors are made in Holland, Mich., but the other parts will be made in New York State and assembled in Bayonne, N.J., he said.

In about five years, the company hopes to have 30 turbines arrayed in the river, each capable of producing 35 kilowatts of electricity. All told, the project would produce about as much power as one wind turbine, enough to power a few hundred homes.

Mr. Taylor said he has had discussions with the corporation that operates Roosevelt Island and officials from Cornell University, which plans to build a school of applied sciences on the island, about how the power from the turbines might be used. One idea he has broached, he said, is installing charging stations for electric cars on the island.

“New York City could be the first city with tidal-powered cars,” he said.

But Verdant Power, which has raised about $33 million from investors, has a potentially more lucrative plan: to sell its technology for use in rivers and even oceans around the world. “The holy grail is to harness the ocean tides,” Mr. Corren said.

Simply turning the East River into a viable source of electricity would be a vindication for Mr. Corren, who began researching the idea as a student at New York University in the early 1980s, and wrote his thesis on global warming. The university later eliminated its applied sciences department and gave up on the tidal turbine technology developed there, Mr. Corren said.

On Tuesday, he grinned at the prospect that his work at N.Y.U. three decades ago might yield a renewable source of power for the campus that Cornell is building, which city officials hope will be an engine of New York’s economic future. (In April, N.Y.U. announced plans to develop its own applied science campus, in Downtown Brooklyn.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/12/nyregion/in-quest-for-east-rivers-power-a-search-for-stouter-arms.html?_r=1

PG&E seeks more 'pumped hydro' to store energy

David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Reservoirs in the Sierra Nevada foothills don't just store water - they can store energy as well.

Through a system called pumped hydro storage, water from one reservoir can be released into another downhill, turning turbines along the way and generating electricity when the state's power grid needs it. Then, when the grid has ample energy, the water is pumped back uphill, to wait until it's needed again.

Six of these systems already exist in California. Now Pacific Gas and Electric Co. wants to build at least one more, arguing that large-scale energy storage will help smooth out the addition of more solar and wind power to the grid. The project is likely to take six years or more to receive all the necessary government permits.

The utility, based in San Francisco, asked California regulators on Friday for permission to spend almost $33.5 million to study and design a pumped hydro system in the Mokelumne River watershed in Amador County. Some of the money would also pay for exploring other possible sites, including one in the Kings River watershed in Fresno County.

The Mokelumne River project would connect two existing reservoirs that PG&E already uses to generate hydroelectric power on a regular basis: the Lower Bear and Salt Springs reservoirs. Other possible variations would include using Upper Bear Reservoir or a new reservoir that would be built on nearby Cole Creek.

Construction of the entire project would cost an estimated $2.5 billion, although the price could vary significantly depending on the final design.

The importance of large-scale energy storage has grown as the nation increases its use of renewable power.

Solar cells and wind turbines are notoriously fickle, their energy output literally changing with the weather. Relying on them for a substantial portion of our electricity supply requires adding backup generation from fossil-fuel power plants or developing some form of energy storage.

"Often wind blows the hardest overnight, when we least need it," said Stephanie McCorkle, spokeswoman for the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state's electrical grid. "Some of the storage technologies could be beneficial in terms of capturing wind power and using it when needed."

But storing energy at that scale isn't easy.

Pumped hydro has been around for decades, with PG&E operating one such system in Fresno County since the 1980s. But other proposed storage technologies remain in the experimental stages. A PG&E project announced last year would use renewable power sources to compress air and pump it into an underground reservoir. The pressurized air would later be fed into turbines, when needed.

Pumped hydro is limited by geography. It requires steep terrain, which the Mokelumne watershed has in spades. Salt Springs Reservoir sits 1,863 feet below Lower Bear Reservoir, lending velocity to the water as it flows from one to the other.

PG&E estimates that the project could one day generate between 400 megawatts and 1,200 megawatts of electricity. A megawatt is a snapshot figure, roughly equal to the amount of electricity used by 750 typical homes at any given instant.

Despite the limitation, pumped hydro has several benefits, including speed. A pumped hydro facility can increase its power output quickly.

"It's really almost a matter of turning the valve and increasing the water flow," said PG&E spokesman Paul Moreno. "Hydropower has the ability to ramp up very quickly, much faster even than fossil-fuel plants."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/08/24/BUKL1F24UC.DTL

Environmental group accuses PG&Eof Greenwashing Latino community

Energy producer PG&E has augmented their 'Let's Green This City' campaign by targeting San Francisco's Latino community. An environmental group accuses the companyof 'Greenwashing.'

By John Han
FogCityJournal.com
August 23, 2007

Despite PG&E's widely marketed campaign known as "Let's Green This City" launched earlier this year, members of a grassroots environmental group, Green Guerillas Against Greenwash (GGAG), say the company is "greenwashing" San Francisco.

'Greenwashing' is a term used to describe the actions of a company, government, or other organization that advertises positive environmental practices while acting in the opposite way. PG&E's campaign, as described by the company, is "an outreach initiative aimed at doing business while maintaining a healthy, sustainable relationship with our environment." Members of GGAG, however, point to PG&E's combined energy production portfolio that includes 65 percent of PG&E's energy being derived from burning carbon dioxide-producing fossil fuels and from nuclear power. Only 2 percent of PG&E's energy production portfolio comes from renewable energy sources, according to the LetsGreenwashThisCity.org website.

"PG&E is a nuclear and gas-powered company that has no intention of moving towards renewable energy policies," Aliza Wasserman of GGAG told Fog City outside a Mission District restaurant where PG&E staged their 'Verde' marketing campaign targeting the Latino community yesterday. "The City of San Francisco is considering a really radical and important policy called Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) that would break the contract with PG&E and move to 51 percent renewable energy by 2017," Wasserman stated. "It's a $17 million PR campaign. They're using all this money to target the Latino community to try to get the message out that they're environmentally friendly.

"I think they're trying to get community leaders to channel their attention to Climate Smart," Wasserman projected.

PG&E's Climate Smart program is a carbon-offset program introduced by the company in June. The voluntary program charges customers to have their carbon emissions footprint calculated. The revenue generated from the program is used to pay for clean air programs such as tree planting initiatives that PG&E says would offset carbon dioxide-generating emissions.
GGAG, however, is critical of the program saying customers should not have to pay into a program "so that PG&E can cover its tracks."

GGAG says the way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is to increase clean renewable energy production while reducing dependence on non-renewable carbon dioxide-producing energy sources. PG&E environmental communications representative Melissa Mooney defended the Climate Smart program. "Those projects are certified by the California Climate Action Registry," Mooney told Fog City. She said the average residential customer would pay an additional $5.00 per month on their bill for Climate Smart.

Mooney estimates as many as two thousand PG&E residential and commercial customers have signed up for Climate Smart since the program's launch. There are approximately 15 million customers in PG&E's total service territory. "We're expecting the enrollments to increase exponentially," Mooney said.

PG&E spokeswoman Darlene Chiu said PG&E has the cleanest portfolio in the nation and is aggressively pursuing renewable energy from solar, wind, and hydroelectric sources. According to Chiu, PG&E derives 13 percent of its energy portfolio from renewable sources. "We are doing what we can and looking at every opportunity to increase our renewable energy portfolio," Chiu told Fog City. She said PG&E's solar farm is the largest in the country.

PG&E announced in July it would purchase 553 megawatts of solar power per year from a solar park in the Mohave Desert. The initiative is expected to bring PG&E's portfolio into compliance with the State of California's mandate of 20 percent renewable energy standard by the year 2010.

Wasserman accused PG&E of only striving to meet the bare minimum requirements noting that PG&E's claimed renewable energy portfolio is still less than half of what Community Choice Aggregation legislation is targeting.

New York City, State Push Energy Change
BY GARY SHAPIRO - New York Sun
August 15, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/60517

Wherever one looks, the Empire State appears to be getting a little greener. Underwater tidal turbines submerged in the East River, geothermal homes in the Hudson Valley, an urban wind farm on a brownfield site south of Buffalo, and a solar building in Battery Park that reuses storm water are among projects changing the way New Yorkers meet their energy needs.

"We will see a greater role for renewable energy in New York overall" in the coming decades, the director of Pace Law School's Energy Project, Fred Zalcman, said. The director of the Urban Energy Project at Columbia University's Center for Energy, Marine Transportation and Public Policy, Stephen Hammer, said the degree of change toward renewable energy in the next decade would ultimately depend on how aggressively the government imposed mandates or established incentives. He said that PlaNYC 2030, Mayor Bloomberg's 127-part proposal to reduce greenhouse emissions, was one of the most comprehensive energy and climate plans ever written for a city. The plan would have "a ripple effect," and other cities would pay attention, he said.

New York State has set 2013 as the date when 25% of all power used in the state should come from renewable sources. The director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, Carol Murphy, said that given the state's abundant natural resources of wind, solar, and hydropower, the state could exceed that target. Governor Spitzer has likewise outlined a "15 by 15" plan to reduce New York's energy demand by 15% by 2015. The lieutenant governor, David Paterson, this summer held the first meeting of the Renewable Energy Task Force, which hopes to spur clean energy companies to settle in New York.

Wind: The president of New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, Paul Tonko, said wind energy was the most economical resource compared to conventional sources.
The managing director of Putnam County-based BQ Energy, Paul Curran, said Denmark derives between 20% and 25% of its electricity from wind, but America derives less than 1% from that source. "There's a lot of room to grow," he said.

But wind, like nearly every alternative to oil, has drawbacks or complications. A founder of Riverkeeper, Robert Boyle, opposes certain wind turbines. He wants the state to issue siting guidelines. "They are not an absolutely benign industrial installation," he said, noting that they have killed birds and bats, have destroyed pristine views, and intermittently block the sunlight. He said many of these 40-story "aerial Cuisinarts" envisioned for central New York State would be the largest structures between New York, Montreal, and Buffalo.

Hydro: Underwater turbines generally draw fewer critics aesthetically. Regarding the six that Verdant has submerged in the East River, Mr. Hammer of Columbia University remembers a humorous moment at one presentation with before and after river views showing the same water with no difference. But a lifelong New York resident and fisherman since 1978, Laurie Nolan, said proposals for hydro-energy off Long Island have her concerned. She said a lot of work remained to determine what effects, including noise, there will be to the marine ecosystem. A member of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, Ms. Nolan said the locations where turbines are placed become "closed areas" that are off-limits to commercial and recreational fishing.

Hydropower already accounts for about 17% of New York's electricity needs. A professor at the University at Albany, Pradeep Haldar, said that New York was a leader in generating hydropower. While there are few future large-scale hydro projects left like Niagara Falls, every smaller-scale hydro project helps, he said. Mr. Zalcman said refitting existing hydro facilities with more efficient turbines would likely occur in the ensuing decade or so.

Solar: Mr. Haldar said he is optimistic about solar energy. He said that in the last 20 years, New York has installed 10 to 20 megawatts of solar power, but in the next decade would try to implement about 2,000 megawatts of energy from solar panels. By comparison, Germany last year alone installed 1,000 megawatts of solar, he said.

Nuclear: The director of a New York-based environmental nonprofit, WildMetro, David Burg, said he agreed with the ecological writer Barry Commoner's view that nuclear power was like using a cannon to ring a doorbell. The chairman of the economics department of Brooklyn College, Robert Bell, who is the author of a book on energy, said that there were drawbacks to nuclear energy such as its "just-for-eternity inventory" of nuclear waste.

Nuclear energy is getting a second look from certain environmentalists. A Greenpeace co-founder, Patrick Moore, writing in the Washington Post last year, argued that in 40 years, used nuclear fuel retains only one-thousandth of its radioactivity. Mr. Moore and a former Environmental Protection Agency director, Christine Todd Whitman, co-chair the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which points out that nuclear energy produces no harmful greenhouse gasses.

The split among environmentalists comes down to whether one thinks the focus needs to be on carbon reduction by any means or whether the nuclear waste disposal problem and security issues ultimately outweigh other aspects of the issue, said Mr. Hammer of Columbia University.

Biofuels: One who believes in the future of biofuels is the 37-year-old founder of Innovation Fuels, John Fox, whose company was the first entrant in Pace University's business incubator program. Now headquartered in Times Square in the same building as "Good Morning America," his company began five years ago with four employees and has since grown to 20. He says biodiesel offers environmental benefits such as reducing asthma-causing emissions. He said the current American biodiesel consumption is about 225-250 million gallons a year, while the country consumes 44 billion gallons of diesel annually. He thinks that biodiesel usage could grow to between 2% and 5% of that $44 billion market in the next decade. One problem is that there are relatively few places to refuel such vehicles: according to the National Biodiesel board, there are 15 fueling stations in the tristate area. Shell Hydrogen and General Motors may also build a hydrogen filling station in White Plains., N.Y.

A key growth area for New York City, several scholars and environmentalists say, is increasing fuel and energy efficiency of buildings. Mr. Tonko said New York might treat energy efficiency the way Texas does oil — as a valuable resource. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority has already encouraged New Yorkers to exchange 275,000 inefficient air conditioners.

Building efficiency in New York is key, said the director of planning of New Yorkers for Parks, Micaela Birmingham, who cited a study that of all the carbon dioxide emissions of greenhouse gases in New York City, 79% comes from buildings — far higher than the 32% national average. A professor at NYU, Martin Hoffert, said the dense packing of people in New York makes for great opportunities for energy savings.

Mr. Zalcman said one area for savings was "cogeneration facilities," whereby small-scale generators combine heat and power into a system converting waste heat into usable energy. He said that the best opportunities for this technology were hospitals, nursing homes, and schools. He said New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and Montefiore Medical Center have such systems. More city buildings will likely adopt cogeneration in the coming years, he said.

The Future: What other changes may occur in the coming decade or so?

Ms. Birmingham of New Yorkers for Parks said that she would like to see greener parking lots, with permeable surface mosses and grasses between squares. She said that New York is already a pretty green place to start with: "People tend to forget that," she said. Its extensive public transit is more sustainable than most suburbs, she said. Mr. Burg said a New York apartment dweller taking the subway daily would have less adverse impact on the environment than an adventurer in the Canadian wilderness who cuts trees to build a cabin, traps furs, and cooks by fire. Per capita energy use in New York City is lower than most other cities because of its public transportation system and smaller houses, said Mr. Hammer of Columbia University.

Mr. Bell of Brooklyn College believes New York will eventually implement widespread bicycle availability, as have cities such asLyon and Paris. In France, riders swipe their credit cards, select a bicycle from a public rack, and pay nothing if the bicycle is returned within the first half-hour. An outreach volunteer at Time's Up, a volunteer environmental group, Judy Ross, said she, too, foresees an increase in bicycle usage in New York in the next decade or two. She offered the example of the increasing number of city bicycle lanes. Ms. Birmingham said that being green was definitely becoming trendier. As to whether it is a fad or a real commitment, she said time would tell.

East River Fights Effort to Tap Its Currents For Electricity
By ANTHONY DEPALMA
New York Times
August 13, 2007

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 competitorswill 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.