Houston – We Have A Future !

Houston, Texas based Hydro Green Energy, in partnership with the city of Hastings, Minnesota, installed in late 2008, the United States’ first-ever commercial, federally-licensed hydrokinetic power station to generate clean, emissions-free hydrokinetic power from the Mississippi River. Power operations began in early 2009, with the second of which is being installed this spring.

Hydrokinetic energy generates power by using underwater turbines to harness the energy from the natural velocity of flowing water, be it river, tidal or ocean current. Traditional hydropower, in contrast, relies upon dams, diversionary methods, or other manmade impounding structures behind which potential energy in the water is stored. Hydro Green Energy’s Hydropower Turbine Arrays can be used to generate renewable energy in rivers, irrigation canals, tidal energy, and oceanenery.

Hydro Green Energy utilizes three blade turbines with a very slow rotation of 21 RPMs, such a large and slow-moving device equates to minimal, and possibly no, environmental impacts and a fish survival rate of 99% and yet, still churning out 250 kilowatts each.

Unlike other underwater turbine designs, Hydro Green Energy’s hydrokinetic power turbines are surface-suspended from a raft, rather than mounted on the river bed. Affording minimal impact and interaction with the seabed and riverbeds.

The Hastings hydrokinetic plant piggybacks an existing 4.4 MW run-of-river hydroelectric project on Army Corps of Engineers’ Lock & Dam No. 2. The hydrokinetic turbine is located behind the turbine of the existing conventional hydropower plant to generate additional power from the energy remaining in the water current exiting the dam and flowing downstream. The energy produced is coupled into the power grid through Hastings’ existing electrical infrastructure. This patented system called Hydro+, bolsters the overall clean energy output of an existing hydropower project in an environmentally-sound manner. This type of project is an innovative approach to conducting an incremental hydropower upgrade, which is eligible for a variety of green energy incentives.

In-stream river and ocean current energy projects have the highest Capacity Factor (CF) of all renewables, meaning that they operate in baseload, continuous fashion, which is important for electric grid reliability and better helps the U.S. meet its growing demand for new power. In-stream river and ocean current Capacity Factor can be above 98%, whereas wind energy’s Capacity Factor is roughly 25% and the Capacity Factor for solar power is often less than 40%. Waterpower is the lowest cost renewable energy source.

Hydro Green Energy’s Current+ projects are run-of-river, free-flow, greenfield, open-river or in-stream hydrokinetic power projects. They require no dams and involve minimal infrastructure for the deployment of the in-stream turbines.

The versatility of Hydro Green Energy’s hydrokinetic technology means that options are wide open. They are currently researching several concepts to integrating with offshore wind power farms. The benefits of this type of hybrid renewable energy system are numerous, but primarily, both of these technologies can share the same transmission infrastructure. Which shows a great flexibility in teamworking different sustainable energies.

River and ocean hydrokinetic power projects are environmentally and marine life friendly, zero emissions, minimal visual impact, no noise and no fuel use. There are an abundance of river, tidal and ocean locations in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Oceania waiting to be developed. So, let’s get going!

We are seeing the future and it looks great! May we have more, please?!

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Tags: Business, energy, Hydropower, Mississippi River, Renewable, renewable energy, united states, Wind Power

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 at 9:37 pm and is filed under Going Green, Green Living, go green. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.