Doug Meffert (LF '08) leads research center in hydrokinetic power
Aug 17, 2011
Loeb Fellowship alumnus Doug Meffert is on a mission to end the southeastern United States' reliance on fossil-fuel energy from the Gulf of Mexico.
According to a recent article in The New York Times, the professor of bioenvironmental research at Tulane University hopes to harness hydrokinetic power to "turn the region from a consumer of fossil fuels into a producer of renewable energy and, one day, an exporter of that energy." Read the full article.
January 18, 2012
A lean venture technology start up in South Africa, http://OnsiteEnergy.za.net, has just completed 4 years R&D on an international patents pending new turbine design which could be considered the first improvement in more than a century of the classic waterwheel which is scalable suitable for both Low Head, Slow Flow River In-Stream Energy Conversion (RISEC), and large industrial scale hydrokinetic power generation on deep, strong current rivers and canals. This sustainable end reliable (24/7) low impact technology can easily be installed in the thousands and thousands of waterways throughout the U.S. to supplement electrical energy derived from fossil fuels, and is much cheaper than solar or wind which only works either when the sun shines (about half the time) or the wind blows (about a third of the time).