Thirst for hydropower is growing in Ocean State

While New England governors discussed ways to import hydropower from Canada this year, local businessmen were working to harness a water source closer to home: the Pawtuxet River in West Warwick.
At the 121-year-old Natick Pond Dam, North Kingstown developer Robert Cioe wants to build a 296-kilowatt hydropower plant using a piece of classical technology, called the Archimedes screw, never used for commercial energy generation before in the United States.
Named after the 3rd-century B.C. Greek thinker credited with inventing it, the screw was commonly used to pump water for more than a thousand years and more recently has become popular in Europe to generate electricity.
Cioe, whose recent projects include the Wickford Junction shopping center and parking garage, has owned land at the dam since 1968, and spent years trying to figure out a way to make a hydropower project work there.
The current project came together when Cioe was approached by New England Hydropower LLC, a Massachusetts-based firm partnered with a British company that’s built about 30 small hydroprojects in the United Kingdom using the Archimedes screw. The Pawtuxet project is being developed under the name JAL Hydro LLC.
New England Hydropower believes the old industrial-revolution-era dams dotting the region hold significant potential for power projects that could be tapped with Archimedes-screw systems.
“There are 10,000 legacy dams in New England and we have a proprietary approach to evaluate and analyze the viability of those dams,” said Chris Conover, chief marketing officer for New England Hydropower. “We are winnowing down from that total and there are other nonscrew folks looking at them. We think we are looking at hundreds that are viable in New England.”
At Natick Pond, New England Hydropower is working for Cioe, who will own the property, but Conover said the firm expects to do its own projects eventually.
In addition to the Natick Pond Dam, New England Hydropower CEO Michael Kerr told the R.I. Economic Development Corporation the company had studied a number of sites on the Pawtuxet and Blackstone rivers, including Pawtucket’s Slater Mill. Neither Kerr nor Conover would say specifically which other dams appeared economically viable for a hydropower project.
For his part, Cioe said if JAL Hydro is successful, he expects to pursue other hydropower projects.
Along with revenue benefits, having developers take over old dams is attractive to communities because so many dams have become safety liabilities.
But while it may be more attractive than putting up windmills or large fossil-fuel plants, small hydro is still a very small part of Rhode Island’s energy mix.
According to utility National Grid, 3.2 percent of the electricity used in Rhode Island came from domestic hydro generators last year.
There are three commercial hydro-electric facilities in Rhode Island with a maximum generating capacity of 3.3 megawatts, according to a list of applications for renewable energy credits with the R.I. Public Utilities Commission.
All three are on the Blackstone River. They are the 1.1-megawatt Thundermist Hydro in Woonsocket, the 818-kilowatt Blackstone Hydro Associates in Central Falls and 1.35-megawatt Pawtucket Hydropower in Pawtucket.
Andrew Locke, vice president of Essex Hydro Associates LLC in Boston, which runs 13 hydro plants in northern New England, said the early 1980s was the last time there was a burst of small-hydro development.
Since then, moderating oil prices followed by declining natural gas prices have made small hydro less financially attractive.
“There are plenty of developers and companies trying to leverage existing dams,” Locke said. “In the 1980s there was a big hydro boom, but without long-term contracts, either they can’t produce enough power to get financing or there are too many regulatory hurdles.”
Locke, a member of the New England Clean Energy Council, said Rhode Island in recent years has become one of the states with the best laws for encouraging renewable development. At the end of this year’s legislative session, state lawmakers added hydropower to the list of renewable energy sources that can qualify for long-term electricity contracts.
Under that program, Cioe expects to receive somewhere between 15 cents and 17 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity in a long-term contract with National Grid. At that price, the plant should produce roughly $250,000 in annual revenue from 1.5 million kilowatt hours generated each year.
With an estimated development cost of $1.7 million to $1.8 million, Cioe said he hopes to recoup the cost of his investment by the time the first 15-year contract expires.
Another key to the JAL Hyrdo project is how quickly the project has moved through what can be notoriously difficult permitting.
Since planning started in the winter, JAL Hyrdo has received a preliminary permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, clearance from the state historic commission and a vote from West Warwick Financial Town Meeting to sell him land at the dam, once the project is fully cleared to go forward.
New England Hydropower leaders say the Archimedes screw is attractive to environmental regulators, because it turns slowly, does not alter the flow of the river and allows fish to pass through it uninjured.
At Natick Pond, JAL Hydro will embed two Dutch-manufactured screws sloping along the channel of water diverted from the river by the old mill.
The EDC last month loaned JAL Hydro $200,000 toward the $475,000 estimated cost of completing feasibility studies and permitting for the project. The loan, through the Renewable Energy Fund, would be repaid if the project is successful.
Cioe said he is on an aggressive schedule that includes submitting an application for a final FERC permit in September, receiving approval next spring and building the facility in time to start producing electricity in the winter of 2014. •

No posts to display

1 COMMENT

  1. This is very interesting approach to small hydro power. This type of system is widely accepted in the UK, and I even see there is one operating in Ontario Canada now. It would be nice to see an installation in the USA.