Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Startup Rentricity recovers energy from water systems-Rentricity's Flow-to-Wire system mimicks pressure reduction valves | SmartPlanet

http://tiny.cc/cr8px
According to David Worthington writing in the October 13, 2010 Smart Planet Daily at www.SmartPlanet.com:
The ancient Greeks harnessed the power of water to grind wheat. Over a millennium later, a start-up is evangelizing its system to generate electricity from hydrokinetic energy recovered from U.S. water utilities.

Rentricity, a Manhattan based company ... has developed a system called Flow-to-Wire.... Flow-to-Wire recovers energy by mimicking the pressure reduction valves (PRVs) that are used to relieve excess pressure in water supply systems. Excess energy is recovered rather than being dissipated as heat. PRVs keep pipelines within pre-defined pressure ranges, and are frequently deployed at locations where water is traveling downhill and pressure rises.

Rentricity deployed a Flow-to-Wire system in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania in October 2010. The system captures energy from the pipes that run water between the Beaver Run Reservoir and a nearby water treatment plant; the recovered energy is re-purposed to help power the utility’s pumps.

The Westmoreland installation costs US$323,000, and will generate 30 kilowatts of electricity, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports, [and] ... will save the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County $40,000 per year in energy costs.

Rentricity has identified 6,500 PRV sites in the US that have the potential to generate 520 mWs of clean energy from $1.5 billion of installed capital cost, according to the company. Other hydrokinetic energy projects have sought to generate power from tidal forces.

by David Worthington, Contributing Editor for SmartPlanet
Smart Planet www.SmartPlanet.com
October 13, 2010
FOR FULL STORY GO TO:
http://tiny.cc/cr8px
Also see www.Rentricity.com and http://www.pr.com/press-release/263351 and http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/westmoreland/s_702414.html

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