I'm Your Turbine Lover

Months ago Gavin talked up the idea of placing turbines into the Bay to generate energy for the city and on Monday, he made it official. At a press conference at Crissy Field, Gavin and San Francisco Public Utilities Commission General Manager Susan Leal announced that they will begin the initial stages of getting this thing going. The turbines supposedly will create 38 megawatts of power, or enough to power 38,000 homes.

What was announced was the usual first steps in any sort of big thing-- doing a study and forming a committee. So Leal announced that money is being set aside for a study and Gavin announced he was forming a committee of environmental leaders, clean energy advocates and other experts to figure this all out. What needs to be studied are where to put them, how big, and how to do it with harming all the fishies. Also probably to be hashed out is who is in charge of all this-- us or PG&E or somebody else. That debate will be where the magic happens.

Right now, the target date for a pilot program is 2009 and should cost between $5 million and $7 million dollars. Between all the inevitable in-fighting, law suits, environmental impact reports, more law suits, more environmental impact reports, price gouging, union kickbacks, and general shadiness, expect it to be more like going live around 2015 and costing $20 million.

Still, it's a pretty cool idea.