Future of Engineering

For more than a century, the Mississippi River has been one of the nation’s most important transportation corridors, a muddy, winding pathway for moving bulk commodities such as grain and coal and other goods.

Now, a New England startup company wants to harness the mighty river for a secondary purpose — generating electricity. The company, Free Flow Power Corp., is pursuing a $3 billion plan to install thousands of small electric turbines in the river bed, reaching from St. Louis to the Gulf of Mexico, that would collectively generate 1,600 megawatts of electricity — enough to power 1.5 million homes.

Gloucester, Mass.-based Free Flow Power is among a number of developers of so-called hydrokinetic projects, defined as those that produce electricity from river currents or ocean waves and tides — not dams.

Like the dozens of young companies building wind farms across the Great Plains or putting solar panels on roofs in California, interest in hydro-kinetic projects is a response to a growing appetite for renewable energy as the nation tries to wean itself off crude oil and reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas linked to global warming.

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Labels: Energy-Environment-Engineering