Hydrokinetics: the Green Hydropower Solution

It’s no secret that hydroelectricity sits near the top of the renewable energy list. But hydro invariably conjures images of soaring concrete dams, rerouted rivers and flooding, environmental damage and displaced people. Not to mention the stiff price tag that comes with such an immense engineering project.

The installation of most of very low head sites is technically feasible, but civil works give rise to high costs, resulting to economically enviable projects. To solve this problem, one must design a new machine using a completely different philosophy to equip such sites.

While the engineering can vary wildly, developers agree that free-flow hydropower has enormous potential. The study of current turbines reveals that they many were invented on the basis of a poor understanding of hydrodynamics, and a consequent false premise.

The new damless development of a submerged helical pathway is capable of extracting high energy from low head sites at low cost because of a physics phenomenon, called repulsion energy, which speeds up the current at the extremity of the curves. This is an exciting breakthrough in green energy; it is modular, relatively easy to install and highly scalable.

Most inventions are not usually new: this new HUG (Helical Unique Generation). invention is a combination of two inventions: the Gorlov helical turbine (1992), which is the child of the Darrieus turbine (1926), and vortex technology, developed by Schauberger (1929). A vortex pathway into which oval twin helical turbines are placed creates a marriage of two inventions: the Helical Pathway System, HUG (Patent Pending) and an oversize eggbeater.

The secret is in the natural motion of the water, which is a vortex. Water reduces resistance by curving more and more inwards thereby avoiding the confrontational resistance of straight motion. Nature has no use for the straight line: think of the water that leaves your bathtub; give it a twirl and see it speed up.

HUG taps into water currents as slow as 2 to 4 knots previously off limits to conventional turbine technology. The vast majority of river/ocean currents in the Canada and United States are slower than 3 knots. This transformational technology is applicable in rivers, man-made channels, tidal waters, or ocean currents. The Gulf Stream (near Miami) and the Kuroshio are the only two currents, which have velocities above 3 knots and flow throughout the year.

There are over 100 patents designed to capture energy from the ocean currents, but none have proved economically viable. Presently, a large propeller is being tested in the Bay of Fundy, which has the highest tides in the world. Most of the funding comes from governmental sources. Why has it taken so many years to develop?

The reason is that the fast moving tides sense that there is an obstruction in its path, namely a propeller, and the flow is easily diverted by this positive pressure. Conversely, a HUG system experiences a negative pressure. The flow is actually attracted into the HUG because the velocity of the flow increase by as much as four times as it swirls into a natural pathway.

Gorlov helical turbines above emit undesirable positive pressure.

The Search for Alternative Sources of Energy

All the signs indicate a tripling of oil prices, caused by a 70% increase in international demand.China and India alone can cause this major increase in transportation costs, while oil supplies continue to drop at 3% per year. All the economic forces point to a serious recession, as countries try to adapt. Inflationary forces will increase as the western world try to adapt to more expensive imports of food and household costs.

Coal is cheap now, because it has no carbon emission costs. Oil production alone will have a high emission cost tax, where one barrel of oil must be burned to produce 1.4 barrels. (The optimum is one barrel burned to a production of 5 barrels, unlike the past oil production, which was as high as 14 barrels)

This will all cause huge changes and shocks! Technology seems to be fixed. Germany and Denmark have no oil reserves, so they have already concentrated on wind power, which is very inefficient. The financing for the necessary changes will come from carbon tariffs on all foreign companies in order to level the playing field.

We really have no choice but to seek out renewable sources of energy: where will all the electricity come from that will be used to charge the alternate car batteries? The solution will come from a myriad of new sources, the most important of which will continue to be hydro power. Yet most of the river locations have already been dammed.

Canada is great, but needs great projects

In the past, opportunities to develop other such national prestige products have been squandered. Prestige projects do cost, but if conceived and used intelligently, they pay off.One must develop a well thought-out, free market agenda, based on environmentalism.

In 2009, there were strong Canadian Research and Development gains in the engineering services sector (17.4%) and electric power and utilities sector (21.1%). Ontario Power Generation posted a $112 million R & D Expenditure, which was a 211%gain since 1999,

while Hydro Quebec spent $100 million for the same goals. SCN-Lavalin Group Inc. showed a $29 million investment in the same time period.

There are other opportunities for research financing: native communities have many damless hydroelectric potential sites within a short distance to their communities. Under the $250 million Aboriginal Loan Guarantee Program, aboriginal communities will be eligible for loan guarantees for assistance of up to 100% of total eligible costs.

Canada has tremendous potential for small hydro development with more than 5500 identified sites (11,000 MW), especially in a free flow environment. It was estimated that as much as 3,400 MW of electricity generation potential could be exploited in U.S. rivers by small, unconventional systems such as free-flow turbines.( Hall et al. 2004)

There will be no need for a dam, because the power comes from the kinetic (moving) energy of the current. So how can this new good be easily described in a few words?

Picture a long spiralling interwoven set of 3 m diameter tubes facing a current from rapids, a waterfall, a tide or an ocean current. Now place an array of twin helical turbines in the HUG Pathway separated within a journey length of a 6 m of each other in the fast spiralling flow.

This image shows some similar features to HUG.

The Darwinian Sea

If one studies the movement of perfectly good ideas into the marketplace, one would concluded that all inventions, before becoming commercial products, must successfully cross a pernicious place called the Darwinian Sea. (Others, less optimistically, call it the Valley of Death.) On one shore is the invention and its creator; on the other shore is the market economy, mass production, and wealth.

This sea is "full of sharks and shoals and storms" -- funds can dry up, parts can break, regulations can bog an idea down, investors can lose heart -- and few inventions manage to complete the journey.

The amount of power that could be produced from ocean currents almost defiescomprehension. Look at the power of an ocean-going HUG System:

25 Turbines in 100 m length x .79 MW/Turbine = 20 MW/100 m lengths.The estimate for a prototype is $750,000, which will yield .24 MW.

There are similar power results from this versatile HUG, which can be used in a myriad of other free flow sources: rivers, rapids, waterfalls and tides. This means more local power will become available, because HUG requires no dam.

Romain (Rome) Audet is the inventor and holder of a Canadian and US patent pending for such a Helical Pathway System, called HUG.