Marine energy company, Verdant Power, has installed tidal power turbines in New York City’s East River which will provide clean electricity to the narrow Roosevelt Island through a distributed generation system connected to Con Edison’s local grid. This is the first commercially licensed tidal power project in the US. It will generate power under a pilot project license issued by the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and is supported by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the U.S. Department of Energy, in addition to New York private equity investors.
It consists of an array of three tidal power turbines at the company’s Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy (RITE) Project site in the East River. This demonstration project used Verdant Power’s fifth-generation tidal power system and its novel TriFrame™ mounting system. The pilot project aims to provide the metrics for system performance, and operational costs which are scalable to other sites, and also to demonstrate marine renewable energy as distributed generation source for alternative global markets.
Commenting on the development John T. Banigan, CEO, Verdant Power said, “We are proud to be the first licensed tidal power project in the U.S. Today we are demonstrating clean power from the tidal currents and that tidal power is a viable energy resource advancing our industry in the U.S. and globally.”