The Mississippi River could power 1.5 mil homes

If Massachusetts-based Free Flow Power has its way, the Mississippi River will be producing 1,600 megawatts of free, constant, no-emission energy by 2017. It'll do this by installing thousands, or even tens of thousands, of in-stream turbines at 59 sites stretching from St. Louis to the Gulf of Mexico.

Hundreds of turbines would be installed at each site and, all together, they would produce enough power to eliminate the need for two large coal-fired power plants.

Of course, right now, this project has a lot of hurdles to jump. First, the company has to complete a detailed environmental analysis of the project, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has to approve the project. The environmental analysis could take as long as three years.

Additionally, Free Flow Power has yet to demonstrate that its systems can operate at costs below that of natural gas power. If the project doesn't produce economical power, financing the project will be impossible. In fact, Free Flow Power, as far as we can tell, hasn't actually tested the turbines outside a laboratory.

Free Flow isn't the only company working on in-stream hydroelectric. A pilot project has already been installed in New York's East River and several other companies are working on similar technology.

But if Free Flow Power can demonstrate that its project isn't going to harm the river's ecosystem, it'll get first crack at developing all 59 of these high-energy sites in the Mississippi ... and that could turn out to be quite an asset.

Via STLToday