November 06, 2006 — By Jeannette J. Lee, Associated Press
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.