Gavin Poises SF for New Power Strategy

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom never misses an opportunity to be on the forefront of political change, especially when it comes to the environment. These days the flashy and charismatic Bay Area leader has embraced water power. Newsom plans to ride the energy wave of the future by installing turbines under the Golden Gate Bridge and current-catching generators off Ocean Beach with the goal of producing electricity for the city to sell or use, or both. "This has never been done in America,'' Newsom said of the generators that can convert water power to electricity. [Not entirely true, as New York has installed similar turbines under the East River with positive results]. Newsom recently took time to preview two ideas in the works for tapping ocean power.

One would plunk turbine generators into the stiff currents beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. The other would put a generating plant off Ocean Beach to convert the energy of the Pacific's rolling waves into electricity. "These are real, not just fantasy," Newsom told the San Francisco Chronicle recently. The ocean energy idea — which already is taking hold in other parts of the world — got its first strong push three years ago locally when Newsom's arch nemesis, then-Board of Supervisors president and Green Party member Matt Gonzalez, won approval of a resolution calling for a tidal-energy power project.

After a couple years of serious study, the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute concluded: That San Francisco could tap enough wave power at Ocean Beach to keep the entire city lit -- depending, of course, on how large a wave plant it chose to build. And two: That the tides at the Golden Gate make that spot the best in the entire lower 48 states to produce tidal power.

For more information: www.sfgate.com