Ontario looks to get power from the St. Lawrence River

Deriving electrical energy from the flow of river water is nothing new. Dams have have been built on rivers to divert the flow into turbines that drive electrical generators for over a century. More recently there have been numerous projects to install turbines into tidal basins to capture the kinetic energy of the water flowing in and out. A new project in Ontario, Canada is aiming to install similar turbines directly into the St. Lawrence River near Cornwall. The provincial government is putting $C2.2 million into a project using turbines provided by Verdant Power. This particular project is expected to produce 15MW of power. Verdant estimates that up to 15,000MW could be produced from natural and man-made waterways in Canada. Verdant already has a similar project in the East River in New York City. Installation of those turbines began in 2006. The turbines are installed on fixed pylons embedded directly in the river bed and the Ontario project could generate enough energy to supply 11,000 homes.

[Source: Government of Ontario, via Green Car Congress]