Monitoring Tidal Power
BioSonics Pioneers Environmental Monitoring for the Tidal Power Industry
Verdant Power’s Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy (RITE) Project represents installation of the world’s first grid-connected kinetic hydropower turbines, and is being operated in New York City’s East River, along the eastern shore of Roosevelt Island.
Kinetic Hydropower is a marine renewable energy solution that employs underwater turbines to generate power from natural currents found in rivers, tides and manmade channels. BioSonics is working at the cutting edge of this new and exciting industry.
Power producers, regulatory agencies and the public are very concerned about the impact of this technology on aquatic species and habitat. BioSonics has been working closely with Verdant Power, Devine Tarbell & Associates and several state and federal regulatory agencies to monitor fish movement in and around the test turbine field.
BioSonics designed, manufactured and installed an automated hydroacoustic monitoring system at the RITE site, consisting of an array of 24 split beam transducers, which provide 18-month, 24/7 continuous coverage of the underwater environment surrounding the turbine field. The BioSonics system has been in non-stop operation since the first of six turbines were installed in the fall of 2006. This system is unprecedented in terms of its comprehensive and continuous nature of underwater monitoring.
As fish and other aquatic life pass through the turbine field, the BioSonics hydroacoustic monitoring system automatically tracks and documents the location and behavior of each individual relative to the zone of risk at each turbine. Advanced real-time, unmanned data processing and reporting techniques developed by BioSonics provide hourly reports of aquatic species activity. Information gathered will be included in Verdant Power’s license application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and will help decide whether Verdant Power can proceed from the test phase of the RITE Project to a full field build-out of up to 10MW capacity.
This continuous, comprehensive knowledge about the project’s impact on the biological community has proven to be critical to the permit approval process, and is providing valuable knowledge on how to operate this and future hydrokinetic power projects with minimal negative impacts on the environment.
BioSonics offers a variety of services and technology to support the developing Hydrokinetic Power Industry.
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Automated, unmanned hydroacoustic monitoring system design, installation and training.
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Baseline site assessment to establish aquatic species composition, distribution, behavior and migratory patterns.
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Baseline site assessment to establish the presence and trajectory of potentially destructive debris.
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Changes in aquatic species composition, distribution, behavior and migratory patterns coinciding with site development, with special emphasis on negative impacts and injury.
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Early warning and alarm systems to allow biologically triggered project operations.
