(P15) Beyond RITE Project Performance: Commercial Tidal Power for the Blue Economy

Verdant Power is on an aggressive trajectory to commercialize tidal energy and realize the vision of a blue economy powered by a robust MRE industry. The performance of its Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)-licensed Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy (RITE) Project in New York City’s East River has enabled the scale-up to commercial sites. The three-turbine RITE Project has not only demonstrated high energy performance of the turbines it has also established benchmarks for CAPEX and OPEX that allow commercial deployments in the future.
The RITE Project is a 5m-scale of Verdant’s 5th generation (Gen5) KHPS grid-connected generation system. Supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), Verdant installed, in October 2020, three Kinetic Hydropower System (KHPS) turbines on its novel TriFrame™ (TF) mount. This system was designed to achieve not only a cost-effective energy capture system, but reduce the operational costs of installation and O&M. In addition to the energy performance of the TF+3 KHPS exceeding specifications and stability, the costs of installation and operation have met their targets for commercialization. Such costs include vessels, crews and time for on-water work, a key driver of MRE OPEX.
As Verdant continues to operate the RITE project, the technologies will achieve TRL 8/9 status, and includes the first independent 3rd party power performance validation under the IEC TC 114 standard. It also continues Verdant’s environmental monitoring with adaptive management, to conclude studies of over a decade at the site.
The success of the project has set the stage for full-scale commercial deployments at sites driven by supportive national and regional energy, regulatory and tariff policies. The unique predictability of tidal power also has the advantage to adapt to distributed blue economy markets with right-sized storage.
This paper explores opportunities highlighted by the RITE project operation including the predictability and availability of the tidal resource for scalability opportunities for arrays, both in terms of multiple units and hydrodynamic efficiency in the resource opportunities for synergy within the MRE industry for support to the blue economy
The operation and performance the RITE project continues to showcase the opportunities for the MRE industry, particularly with the application of international standards and streamlined regulatory frameworks. Altogether, these advances improve stakeholder and investor confidence, key to the rapid growth of MRE and the blue economy.