A river runs through it, and power comes out
Back from vacation…
I saw a couple of announcements recently showing that attempts to capture the energy in river flow are alive and well, though I still have doubts about the overall contribution such technologies can make to the clean energy space. Sustainable Development Technology Canada recently awarded a $2.8 million grant to Renewable Energy Research, a subsidiary of Quebec-based RSW that is leading a project to demonstrate modular river turbines in the St. Lawrence River. The Quebec government has also awarded $2.7 million, bringing the total funding to $5.5 million.
There isn’t much information out there about RSW’s TREK river turbine technology. I’ve attempted to get more information from the company but they haven’t been responsive. RSW is an engineering company and, from what I understand, this technology and project are a side venture for them. According to SDTC, “RER and its partners will demonstrate the TREK technology, a modular, covered, self-anchoring and highly robust river turbine. This technology can be used to provide baseload, dispatchable or remote electricity. The project will see the installation of two 250 kilowatt-rated TREK turbines in the St. Lawrence River, near the Old Port of Montreal, by the end of 2010.”
Meanwhile, a spinoff from the University of Michigan is beginning tests on a new river power technology called VIVACE. The company is called Vortex Hydro Energy, and it hopes to start capturing energy from the St. Clair River as part of a three-month trial that begins in spring 2011. VIVACE doesn’t rely on underwater turbines like the TREK technology. Instead, it captures energy through vibrations that are caused by vortices as water rushes past an array of cyclinders installed on the river bed. It’s the same way salmon and other fish harness energy from the water to help them swim upstream, which is why you could categorize this technology as biomimicry. I wrote about the technology in detail in December 2008 in this MIT Technology Review article.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
