High School Students Propose Roosevelt Island ReefTide East River Turbine Electric Energy Project For MIT And FAB Foundation Regenerative Futures Innovation Challenge
A team of NYC High School Students have submitted a proposal to the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology (MIT) and FAB Foundation Regenerative Futures: Innovation Challenge (Innovation Challenge) for an East River tidal energy project that will supply selected Roosevelt Island locations with electricity. According to FAB, the Innovation Challenge is:
Hosted by the MIT pK-12 Initiative and the Fab Foundation, we invite high school aged students and their teachers or mentors around the world to participate in our regenerative challenge – to develop creative solutions to our most pressing environmental issues. We will support 15 teams in transforming their bold ideas into tangible solutions for the future of the planet. Through hands-on, iterative, team-based design and fabrication, combined with mentorship from the fab lab and maker community, participants will develop and prototype solutions to these challenges.
Tomas Bernales-Jabur is one of the students working on the Roosevelt Island tidal energy project. According to Mr Bernales-Jabur:
Venturi Energy is a high school team from the Rudolf Steiner Upper School. We designed ReefTide for the MIT Regenerative Futures Challenge and were selected as semi-finalists. We are currently competing in the next phase of the project.
ReefTide is a tidal turbine
that uses the Venturi effect to speed up the current and generate more electricity with more efficiency. It also works as the structure for an artificial reef, and we have partnered with the Billion Oyster Project to install oysters on our units and to develop community education and communication structures.
As part of this next phase, we are developing more concrete, community-based partnerships to truly integrate the community into our concept design. If our project is successful, we would install initial prototypes for testing in the waters around Roosevelt Island and provide electricity for a few selected locations.
For this initial phase of iteration and development, we want to hear the opinions of Roosevelt Island residents. To accomplish that, we created a Google Form with 10 short questions for residents to answer.
Verdant Power spent 15 years investigating the RITE power project and then abandoned it. They spent considerable time and money in the process. These high school kids should carefully investigate their procedures and decisions.
Verdant Power spent 15 years investigating the RITE power project and then abandoned it. They spent considerable time and money in the process. These high school kids should carefully investigate their procedures and decisions.