Tens of thousands of turbines anchored to the bottom of the Mississippi River could someday provide more than a gigawatt of renewable energy, enough to power a quarter of a million homes. That's the vision of Free Flow Power, a startup based in Gloucester, Massachusetts, that recently received preliminary permits from the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) granting it the right to explore energy production at dozens of sites along the lower Mississippi over the next three years.
The proposed development is one of a number of "hydrokinetic" projects in the works. Such projects seek to generate electricity from wave movement, tidal flows, or river currents, without the use of dams.
The ambitious Mississippi project, however, relies on relatively unproven technology. The only commercial hydrokinetic river-power system operating in the U.S. is a single turbine deployed by Hydro Green Energy close to a conventional hydropower dam on the Mississippi River in Hastings, Minnesota.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Turbines Could Tap the Mississippi's Power - Technology Review
Author: Phil McKenna
