Giant Turbines Pulled From Beneath East River: See It

ASTORIA-LONG ISLAND CITY, NY — Those who have glanced out to the East River from Astoria and Long Island City sometime this week may have noticed a bright blue boat hoisting three enormous metal objects from beneath the water.

Those three objects are tidal turbines that were installed last October off the eastern coast of Roosevelt Island, part of the nearly 20-year-long Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy (RITE) project aimed at generating electricity through the tides.

This week, crews returned to the river to pull the three turbines — each measuring more than 16 feet in diameter — from the water for a maintenance exercise. They were retrieved Wednesday morning and are set to be lowered back into the river sometime after 5 p.m. Thursday.

Their long-awaited installation last fall — which came 8 years after RITE was given a federal license to use their turbines in the city, according to Green Tech Media — was carried out by the company Verdant Power along with the U.S. Department of Energy, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation.

Underwater, the 35-kilowat turbines connect to underwater cables, which in turn connect to vaults on the shoreline that link to a control room, according to Power Technology. According to a video produced by the federal government the turbines set records for energy generation during their first 100 days of operation.

In 2013 Dean Corren, Verdant's director of technology, told CBS News that the company's long term goal was to put larger turbines in the ocean and sell energy directly to Con Ed to power New York City's power grid.

While this vision hasn't come to fruition yet the turbines have delivered electricity to a Gristedes supermarket and an RIOC parking facility.

Beyond New York, the East River experiment could pave the way for more widespread use of tidal turbines — especially larger, 10-meter turbines, which are more economically viable, according to the Department of Energy.

Verdant is hoping to set up a 30-megawatt tidal farm of those 10-meter turbines— which is thousands of times more powerful than the kilowat turbines in NYC — off the coast of Wales, U.K., by 2023, reported Green Tech Media.

Until then, the project is all the more important locally now that New York — which is aiming has closed down the Indian Point nuclear power plant, creating an energy gap that will likely be filled largely by fossil fuels.

Looking even farther into the future, the tidal electricity is also significant as the city aims to use renewables, instead of fossil fuel, to achieve their goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.

Patch reporter Nick Garber contributed to this piece.