New Technology Harvests Energy from River and Tidal Movement
A number of companies have used the wind and sun to produce energy. Now, one company is using the force of flowing rivers and ocean currents.
The company is based in the U.S. state of Maine. It is called the Ocean Renewable Power Company, or ORPC. The company recently presented the new technology at an energy conference near Washington, DC.
Christopher Sauer is the chief executive officer and co-creator of ORPC. He says the technology was designed for small, rural communities that do not have easy access to power sources.
Taking energy from water movement
The ORPC technology is an energy generator which can be put under water, called RivGen. It works in a series of steps. First, the generator is put in the middle of a steel cage. The cage goes on top of a wide boat with a flat bottom called a pontoon. Wheels – or, turbines – are attached to each side of the generator.
Once the pontoon boat is fixed to one place, it is flooded with water. The pontoon, cage, and generator all sink to the bottom of the river. There, the river current turns the wheels and creates as much as 50 kilowatts of power.
CEO Christopher Sauer says the generator is not very tall, so it can work in water areas that are not very deep. Other companies are not able to work in shallow water, he adds.
And, Sauer says, the turbines are safe for the animals that live in the river.
“At the peak of salmon season, we had almost two million fish pass by this thing but at the end of all of that, we did not have a single fish injury that we knew about,” he said.
