The NY Daily News reports that after years of delays, Verdant Power may finally start commercial operations next year - Choppy waters for turbines.

A PIONEER'S path is rarely easy. Just ask Trey Taylor of Verdant Power about his quest to turn the East River's turbulent tides into oil-free electricity.

Verdant's push to produce clean power by using large underwater turbines to harness the river's currents has been slowed by bureaucratic red tape and two major equipment breakdowns.

But those failures taught Verdant valuable lessons that have the company tantalizingly close to turning on the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. "Everything is learning as we go," said Taylor, who co-founded Verdant in 2000 and now serves as its president.

After years of testing, Verdant expects to establish a money-making tidal-power operation along the Queens shoreline by next year. That operation, which requires a federal license, would place 30 turbines in the East River's east channel between Queens and Roosevelt Island.

It would have the capacity to produce 1 megawatt of power - a portion of which may be sold to the MTA to power the subway system, Taylor said. For comparison, in peak summer months, the city uses about 11,500 megawatts at any given time, said Prof. Stephen Hammer, head of Columbia University's Urban Energy Project.

Starting in 2006, Verdant anchored six turbines in the east channel. Measuring 16 feet in diameter, the turbines operated for 9,000 hours, generating 80 megawatt hours of juice for a supermarket and parking garage on Roosevelt Island.

But in that time, two different turbine designs malfunctioned under the current's heavy pressure - providing initial setbacks but also important lessons.

The Washington Post has an article on the latest iteration of Verdant Power's attempts to harness the tidal power of New York's East river - N.Y. Tests Turbines to Produce Power .

On a recent morning, a crane sank a 16-foot rotor into the waters of the East River and divers swam deep to bolt it to the bottom. By early evening, as the northerly current sped up, the rotor began to spin, a big thunk sounded in the control room, a green light went on, and electricity began to pour into a nearby supermarket.

The scene represents an experiment in tidal power, using turbines that look like underwater windmills, and it is the first of its kind nationwide and one of only a few such pilot projects in the world.

"This is just the beginning of a project, but the project itself is emblematic of a whole new industry," said Trey Taylor, the president of Verdant Power, a small company that created the experiment and hopes to expand it to commercial use with 300 turbines in the East River that could power up to 10,000 homes in the city.

Engineers, policymakers and energy experts say projects like the East River tidal turbines are already placing this city at the urban vanguard of energy production. They say New York City is uniquely positioned to advance sustainable energy projects because of the city's enormous need for power, its high electricity costs, and the pressure for new sources created by its unusual rule that 80 percent of energy must be generated within the city.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has sought to make New York the cleanest and greenest major city in the country. He has faced setbacks -- for example, when his congestion pricing plan to reduce the number of cars in Manhattan was killed by the state legislature. He was mocked when he spoke of placing windmills on bridges and skyscrapers, and a few New York tabloids ran illustrations of wind turbines on the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building.

Still, he has asked private companies to submit ideas to develop wind, solar and water energy projects. And for the past year, his administration has supported the water turbines, a project many years in the making.

The idea is simple: As water flows, it spins the rotors and produces electricity. The turbines run according to the tide charts, which are as predictable as phases of the moon. The idea was rejected for state funding in 2000, only to be accepted a few years later.

The strength of the flows of the East River -- which is technically not a river, but a tidal strait, whose current switches direction throughout the day -- makes it an ideal spot for generating power. The strength of the current also makes it hard on equipment. Swift-moving waters chewed up the first two types of turbines, which Verdant, a small, private company, installed in late 2006 and early 2007.

The first blades were fiberglass with a steel skeleton. Later, another set of rotors was made from aluminum and magnesium. "The water was very powerful, so it broke the rotors," Taylor said.

The newest blades are made from an aluminum alloy, attached to rotors whose strength has been extensively tested. If all holds together, Taylor expects to apply for permission to expand and launch a commercial operation.

TreeHugger has an update on tidal/hydro power company Verdant Power's latest project - harnessing Canada's St Lawrence river.

The province of Ontario is investing C$2.2 million into a project to demonstrate the feasibility and commercial viability of using free flow turbines to harness some of the St. Lawrence River's kinetic energy and turn it into electricity.

This project is for 15 megawatts, enough to power 11,000 average-sized homes, but Verdant estimates that "there is enough potential power in the water currents of Canada’s tides, rivers and manmade channels to generate 15,000 MW of electricity using its technology". That would be about the equivalent of 15 big coal power plants.

But we have to wonder... Did they pick Cornwall just because they could make a really cool acronym? The Cornwall Ontario River Energy (CORE) Project.