Tapping The Mississippi  

Earth2Tech has an interesting post on a plan to put a lot of run-of-river micro-hydro devices into the Mississippi River, generating a fairly respectable gigawatt of power.

Waves, tides, rivers, canals…if it flows, chances are someone’s figuring out a way to harness it to produce clean energy. And a Massachusetts-based startup called Free Flow Power is even working on tapping the mighty Mississippi. The company has a $3 billion plan to place thousands of small electric turbines down the Mississippi river — from St. Louis to New Orleans — which could generate over a gigawatt of electricity, according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

The startup reportedly has preliminary three-year permits to study 59 sites in the Mississippi, granted by the marine power gatekeeper, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Each turbine is about 2 feet in diameter, and harnesses the current to spin and generate electricity; each of the sites would require hundreds of thousands of turbines. So yeah, a massive project.