04/29/2007: "Fed’s Give Permits For Study Of Tidal Energy"

The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has issued preliminary permits to Snohomish County to conduct an investigation into the viability of using tidal energy in San Juan Channel (and six sites outside of SJC) to generate electricity.

As previously reported in The Island Guardian, The Snohomish Public Utility District (SPUD) has proposed hundreds of turbines in tidal currents in the waters of San Juan County, but the recent issuing of permits limits the work to feasibility studies, which, according to SPUD, will amount to a paper study only.

What are the changes that SPUD will eventually installed hundreds of turbines in the waters of Washington? In what appears to be a prescient opinion, Gordy Peterson’s column “Poker Face” appears to have correctly predicted the real motive for conducting the study, which is, to prove tidal energy is not as cost effective as wind generated power.

In a letter to San Juan County and the other “stake holders”, Steve Klein, General Manager of SPUD, states that “Wind power continues to be the primary source of renewable generation, but the most promising remaining sites are in eastern Washington”, and due to the costs of transmission from there to here, they will evaluate “other forms of renewable energy may exist in our own backyard”, while acknowledging that “wind energy continues to remain an important part of the region's renewable portfolio”.

The likelihood that hundreds of turbines floating in salt water will be found to be more economically viable than turbines standing in the grasslands of eastern Washington, seems a bit unlikely; but that is, after all, the ostensive reason for the study.

Related to all of this is a call for public comment from FERC on the question of how permits for tidal energy -and other water related proposals- are processed. Find out more on how to give input