River power - time for some sums

Just back from Budapest, where the Danube transects the city in a stately curve. It seems to run at a reasonable walking pace (this in June - faster in March/April, I'll bet), and must contain a fair slug of energy available for capture. Of course, this is exactly what Verdant are doing in New York at the moment.

The difference here is that Budapest has lots of lovely bridges, which could potentially act as foundations for tidal turbines (as Southampton University demonstrated at a small scale on Yarmouth Pier).

What the world needs now is some calculations on the possible power available from the Danube in Budapest. And once you've covered the Danube, there's the Rhine, the Rhone, the Volga, the Thames....

Verdant Power - virtual tour of the RITE project

It's not every day that the Pope has any impact on the marine renewables industry. But he did yesterday, as the security arrangements for his talk to the United Nations in New York made it logistically difficult for the delegates at the Global Marine Renewable Energy Conference to get from the conference hotel (Broadway and 44th St) to Roosevelt Island (aerial tram from 59th Street and 2nd Avenue).

So Verdant brought a virtual tour of the facility to the hotel, and very impressive it was too.

For me, the key points were

• Verdant has generated nearly 50 MWh over 7,000 turbine-hours


• The technology is on version 5 - this isn't an easy or quick process


• The units are currently rated at 35 kW, and achieve a capacity factor in a tidal setting of c. 30%, but maybe 70%in run-of-river


• Verdant was extremely coy about costings


• Verdant has spent "as much" on environmental studies (lots of money on fish monitoring) as on the technology

I'm very impressed with the step-wise Verdant approach (reminiscent of the Pelamis staged development approach) and by the progress achieved.

Off to New York

So it's off to New York for the ambitiously-named "Global Marine Renewable Energy Conference."

I'm particularly keen to hear about developers, including

• Ron Smith, Verdant Power, United States


• George Taylor, Ocean Power Technologies, United States


• John Cooper, Ocean Renewable Power Company, United States


• Des McGinnes, Pelamis Wave Power, Scotland


• Andrew Parish, Wavebob Ltd., Ireland


• Martin T I Wright, Marine Current Turbines Limited, Scotland

and also about financing and revenue support in the US and Canada.

It's an early start: 0720 on Thursday, so I'm glad I'm flying west to attend the conference!

I'll be sure to report back as the conference progresses...

Verdant Power - pluses and minuses

In an earlier post, I promised to write more about my recent visit to Verdant Power...but first, don't let the picture fool you - there's a 19 hour non-slack period in this stretch of water, running at up to 3 m/s.

On the plus side:

• Verdant's got kit in the water (at least I think it was in the water, the East River's a bit murky)


• Verdant has made real progress with the technology, through umpteen refinements


• It's got further development plans, both in the East River and elsewhere


• The design is simple, with relatively few things to go wrong, and may be scalable


• The site is fantastic, with well-behaved bi-directional flow at up to 3 m/s, within a 4-iron of the United Nations building (well, one of Tiger Woods' 4-irons), and better still a short taxi ride from Wall Street


• The company's already raised some significant finance (exploiting that taxi ride from Wall St)

On the "still to do" side:

• Installation is still difficult and expensive


• Labour costs in New York are high


• Reliability is still unproven, despite time in the water (due in part to the fast technology iterations)
  
• Revenue support mechanisms in the US are not as clear as in the UK

On balance, I was very impressed with the company's progress, technology and concept. There's still a fair way to go, but it seems to me that there could well be commercial applications for the technology, particularly in more accessible run-of-river style applications.

In summary, nice one Verdant!