When you think of the East River in New York City, renewable energy probably isn't the first thing that comes to mind. Yet the river, once a cesspool and dumping ground for an occasional body, has found itself at the forefront of the green-energy movement. In September 2012, Trey Taylor, owner of Verdant Power, sank a special three-bladed electric turbine into the waterway that runs along Manhattan's east side. By 2017, 30 of those turbines could dot the river, with each unit generating 35 kilowatts of electricity. If successful, the project could provide enough power to fuel hundreds of homes. These days, 6 percent of U.S. The supply is limitless, although not every area is a good place to build a hydroelectric project. If you're a freshwater fish like a trout, the last thing you want to see is a dam. Dams prevent the upstream movement of juvenile fish to the waters where they'll spawn and live out the rest of their days.

Environmentalists have long bemoaned the havoc dams can wreak. One of the most technologically advanced fish ladders is in Montana at the Thompson Falls hydroelectric plant on the Clark Fork River. It's the first full-length fish ladder in the continental U.S. They begin their ascent up the steel and concrete fish ladder, battling rushing water each step of the way. Each of the 48 steps, or pools, is about 5 feet (1.5 meters) wide and 6 to 10 feet (1.8 to 3 meters) long and has openings at the top and bottom. The fish eventually reach a 17-foot (5-meter) gathering pool and then a holding tank. Fish ladders don't always work as well as they're designed to though. Nature knows a thing or two. All you have to do is look. All they did was apply the spiral-shaped design of human blood vessels to create a similarly shaped penstock pipe. The helicoid penstock is similar to a rifle barrel, which has spiral grooves etched inside.

Rushing water flows through the helicoid penstock, and like a bullet through a rifled barrel, begins to spin. Dickson is talking about a hydroelectric generator that takes advantage of the immense pressure differentials in the deep water of lakes or Prime Boosts Male Enhancement Boosts Supplement oceans. The AWG is a large, hollow cylinder filled with air and anchored to the seafloor at varying depths. An electrical generator sits inside the cylinder. To generate power, a valve lets water into the device under great pressure. The flowing water enters a vacuum chamber and forces a piston to climb a stator, longer lasting pills the stationary part of the generator on which a rotor spins. When the piston reaches a metal stop at the top of the stator, it releases a valve connected to a hollow snorkel pipe at the base of the cylinder. The pipe opens, allowing air to decompress. That forces the rotor down the stator, once again generating electricity. Water is also pushed out of the cylinder at great force and out the snorkel pipe to the surface of the ocean.

The water shoots out of the top of the pipe like a geyser. The release valve then closes, the water intake reopens, and the cycle repeats itself. The device hadn't been prototyped or patented at the time of publication. Did you know that it's also an energetic sound? Kinetic energy is the energy of movement, and rushing water is brimming with it. Engineers and scientists have come up with a variety of devices to harness the hydrokinetic energy generated by waves. In fact, scientists say if we could extract only 15 percent of the energy along the U.S. Did the outgoing tide drag you from shore? Tides pack a powerful punch, and we can use them to generate electricity. In 2012, one of the first tidal power projects in the United States began delivering power to the electrical grid. The project, an underwater turbine off the coast of Maine, was built by Ocean Renewable Power Co. The turbine resembles an old-fashioned lawn mower, but in essence is a type of undersea windmill.

The turbine's foils rotate when the tide rushes in and out of Cobscook Bay near Eastport. The tides in the area are some of the highest in Maine, Prime Boosts Pills reaching 20 feet (6 meters). Dams not only alter the landscape, but they can also affect wildlife (remember those fish ladders we mentioned?). What if we could harness the power of the river without building dams and reservoirs? The company's RiverStar system harvests kinetic energy all along a river rather than in one spot, as dams do. Here's how it works: Engineers place a number of "modules" across a river. Each module is made up of a turbine, a stabilizer, a mooring system and an energy conversion system. High-tension steel cables hold each unit in place and connect one to another in an array. Flowing water passes through the turbines, and as they spin, they collect the river's energy, which drives a generator. Bourne officials say RiverStar can generate 50 kilowatts in a river with a water speed of 4 knots.