Green Articles
WINDING RIVER - New technology could harness the power of Mississippi, turning it into a power plant
Times-Picayune : Sunday, November 04, 2007 : By Pam Radtke Russell
The Mississippi River has been responsible for a lot of things in Louisiana. Generating electricity hasn't been one of them.
Navigation, sediment, debris and the state's flat terrain have hindered development of any kind of hydraulically generated power on the largest river in the nation. Louisiana gets just 1 percent of its electricity from hydraulic power.
But a new nationwide focus on renewable sources of power -- such as wind, water and the sun -- and new technologies could turn the Mighty Mississippi into a power plant responsible for generating electricity for from 640,000 to 1.3 million homes or more.
"Literally there could be 100s to 1,000s of megawatts in the Mississippi River," said Wayne Krouse, CEO of Hydro Green Energy LLC in Houston. "It's a very large potential resource."
Krouse's company has six preliminary permit applications in with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to study putting its technology in the Mississippi River. Another company, Free Flow Power LLC, of Manchester, Mass., has 10 times that many applications pending before FERC.
Free Flow intends to spend up to $3 billion installing turbines up and down the Mississippi River from Illinois to the mouth of the river, including at 36 sites in Louisiana, according to Dan Irvin, CEO of Free Flow. Additionally, the Center for Bioenvironmental Research at Tulane University is working with Global Green, an environmental organization, on a yearlong study looking at the viability of river power for the Holy Cross neighborhood and for Tulane University's planned Riversphere research and museum.
"There are a billion liters per minute on average coursing through New Orleans," said Doug Meffert of the Tulane University Center for Bioenvironmental Research. "It's been a source that's largely been underutilized for energy."
In general, the projects that have been proposed by Hydro Green and Free Flow call for vast arrays of turbines below or beside shipping channels. Each turbine would be turned by the water flow to produce electricity, which would be transmitted to the power grid.
The projects are "so vastly different than dams, more like windmills than dams," said Krouse.
While the river's power potential is being explored by a growing number of people, it will likely be at least five years before any of the new projects start supplying electricity.
The process for obtaining a license to operate a hydropower facility is more time consuming and costly than obtaining a license to construct and operate a new nuclear plant, Krouse and Irvin said.
And then, there's the not-so-small matter that none of the technologies has ever been put into the river to determine whether these projects, dubbed hydrokinetic, are practical.
"We recognize that, while it's possible to generate electricity from that kind of water, there are a lot of problems, technical and practical," said Bryan Crouch, an energy engineer with the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources. The river's sediment is the biggest problem, he said.
"A lot of water flows down the Mississippi, and there's a lot of energy in that. Taking advantage of that economically -- while we don't at all think it's impossible -- I haven't seen anything yet that would convince me that could overcome" those obstacles," he said.
Different approaches
Krouse and Irvin are both confident that their designs can conquer the river's obstacles.
Free Flow Power will place its turbines on pilings, 25 feet off the bottom of the river to reduce silting in the turbines and 40 feet below the surface to stay clear of ship traffic. In New Orleans, the river is about 200 feet deep, Meffert said.
Hydro Green will attach its turbines to the bottom of barges that will be anchored on the sides of the river in areas where it's common to have barges anchored.
"I think everyone is always concerned about navigation," Krouse said.
But Hydro Green will just take up about 200 feet on the side for the river.
"To say that it's a navigational issue is a bogus one," he said. "It's not going to be any more of a problem than a barge that's secured on the bank for storage."
Hydro Green's approach should minimize regulatory hurdles and development costs, Krouse said.
Hydro Green has proposed one 5-megawatt project on the river near Tulane University, and three additional projects totaling 15 megawatts in Plaquemines Parish.
Free Flow will position 160,000 turbines in "ribbons" of pilings at its different sites along the river. Within each ribbon the company will position pilings about 50 feet apart, each holding six to 12 turbines about 6.5 feet in diameter. At the smallest site, the company will install 900 turbines. At its largest, it will install 3,000 turbines. The company has requested permission from FERC to study using 36 sites -- about one-fifth of the Mississippi River in Louisiana -- to install its turbines. Sites were chosen based on flow rate and proximity to transmission lines and potential industrial users.
At a river velocity of 6 feet per second, Free Flow's turbines will generate 1,600 megawatts of power, Irvin said. The federal Department of Energy says that 1 megawatt supplies power to about 800 homes. The Waterford 3 nuclear plant in St. Charles Parish generates 1,075 megawatts.
'A long process'
In addition to the physical and engineering challenges, both companies face high regulatory and economic hurdles to get their projects in the river.
Hydro Green and Free Flow have applied for preliminary permits from FERC. If granted, the permits would provide rights on that site for three years to study and vet their proposals, said Celeste Miller, a spokesman for FERC.
"This is a long process, it will be vetted by many, many people over years," Irvin said.
Several state and local agencies will be included in the process and community hearings will be held before a license is issued.
The FERC process for permitting hydropower projects is based on construction of large dams that impede navigation and have a greater impact on the surrounding environment. But many of these new hydrokinetic projects don't have the same issues, said Linda Church Ciocci, executive director of the National Hydropower Association.
FERC has started to streamline the hydro process, and has agreed to allow smaller projects in the water on a short-term basis in a pilot so the companies can generate money to complete the lengthy and costly permitting process. But no licenses or permits have been granted for any of these projects.
"These technologies are fairly new," said Ciocci. "Those involved in licensing need more information on their impact."
While Hydro Green would likely take advantage of the pilot process, Free Flow is going ahead full bore, planning on wading through the traditional framework for hydropower projects.
The company would like to be complete with the permitting and licensing process construction within 2 1/2 years, though it is prepared for the process to take five years, as is typical, Irvin said.
The length and expense of permitting the project is one reason Free Flow has such gargantuan plans, Irvin said.
"What we're doing to make it work is to do a large-scale development, so the cost of FERC licensing process is a reasonable" portion of the company's start-up costs. The project's economies of scale should also allow Free Flow to sell electricity at rates that are competitive with power produced by burning natural gas, oil or coal, Irvin said.
Free Flow may be setting itself up for another obstacle by applying for so many permits.
FERC is being cautious about awarding preliminary permits because it doesn't want companies to speculatively tie up portions of water bodies simply to sell their rights to another company. The maneuver is called "site banking" and has been compared to companies purchasing desirable Internet domain names in hopes of selling them in the future to the highest bidder.
Despite its numerous sites, Irvin said the company is not site banking.
"If we're site banking, we're throwing a lot of money down the drain," he said of the money the company is spending to start the regulatory process and turbine engineering.
Emerging technologies
After going through the regulatory trials of getting a preliminary permit, companies still have a long way to go to prove their technology can work in the Mississippi River.
Hydrokinetic technologies are still in their infancy in the United States. So far, only one project, a project powered by the tides in the East River off New York City, has gotten off the ground. There, modified wind turbines are being tested in the river.
Many small start-up companies have taken on the challenge of trying to design a turbine to best take advantage of water flow. Some are simple, such as the modified wind turbines in the East River. Others are encased to be protected from debris and spin and move, like a rotating Ferris wheel, to best take advantage of changing water flow, Meffert said.
Both Free Flow and Hydro Green have their designs, but it's uncertain how those designs will react in the Mississippi.
Even Meffert, who said he is familiar with the general characteristics of the river, said Tulane will spend a year studying the river to get a better sense of where the best site is for a turbine.
Tulane is going to monitor a cross section of the river to determine the velocity at high and low points and "something in between," he said.
Meffert said he'd like to see some of the projects tested in the Mississippi River and envisions a daylong "turbine derby" festival in the Mississippi, in which companies put their designs in the water to prove their design concepts in the muddy, debris-laden, and unpredictable river.
"I firmly believe that if we just can demonstrate the viability at this one site," he said, "the potential for the entire region is enormous."
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Pam Radtke Russell can be reached at prussell@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3351.