Harnessing the East River's Currents for Electricity

I've written about using water to create energy before - but that was with the ocean's wave power.

But this article - from ANTHONY DePALMA, at the N.Y. Times, is another cool leap into the use of water for energy. But this time it comes from the current of river waters:

"six underwater turbines that turn the river’s currents into electricity"

Photo from Verdant Power


But the project hasn't been without problems.

Despite a string of mishaps that has taken a bit of the luster off the project, there is still sufficient optimism about tidal power to attract investments, and even some old-fashioned competition.

Even still, once they iron out a few of the issues they're having, this looks like it could be a very interesting alternative energy option.

Al

U.S. doing away with regular light bulbs

I posted about this issue quite a while ago - the fact that countries are starting to phase out regular / incandescent light bulbs. Now - it looks like the U.S. will be following along with other countries. This report By Marianne Lavelle, from U.S. World and News Report talks about it clearly.

My biggest concern at the time was the fact that there was mercury inside the bulbs. See the comment just below:

"I've heard that CFLs have mercury in them--isn't that bad? Consumers are rightly concerned about the toxic substance mercury that helps CFLs produce light. Even though the amount sealed in each bulb is small--one old-fashioned thermometer had about 100 times as much mercury--contact local trash collection for disposal instructions. Environmentalists agree that more work must be done on bulb recycling programs."

However, they make another point which I hadn't thought about before here...

By the way, don't think that incandescent bulbs are mercury free. In the United States, the chances are at least 50 percent that their light is generated by a coal-powered plant featuring mercury as well as other types of pollution. Popular Mechanics recently crunched the numbers to find that even if the mercury in a CFL was directly released into the atmosphere, an incandescent would still contribute almost double that amount of mercury into the environment over its lifetime.

Isn't there efficient lighting without mercury? Yes. By 2012, the chances are good that consumers will have many more options to replace incandescent bulbs.

I don't know the answer, you'll have to decide for yourself. Actually, NO, you won't have to decide. The choice has already been made for you. Isn't that great?

Uh, Yeah! I'm not sure how I feel about that, but they make lots of choices for us already, so what's something this small going to hurt, right?

Al