As plans for underwater turbines to generate electricity from Mississippi River currents move forward, Mayor Laurence Leyens said the City of Vicksburg wants to be a customer.

In comments during a public meeting at the Vicksburg Convention Center on Free Flow Power Development Company’s plans to install 55 such sites on the river between St. Louis and the Gulf of Mexico, Leyens said such an endeavor would require changes in state law and financing from the federal stimulus package.

“The City of Vicksburg is very interested in these types of renewable energy projects,” Leyens said. “We have investment opportunity where we can capitalize on one of these turbines.”

Costs and scope of such an endeavor are difficult if not impossible to pin down. Entergy Mississippi, a subsidiary of the New Orleans-based investor-owned utility Entergy Inc., holds the exclusive right under state law to sell electricity in Vicksburg. If completed as planned, electricity from the turbines will be sold to energy providers. The cost of each turbine would run “in the high five-figures,” company CEO Dan Irvin said.

Leyens said the city’s annual energy spending on city-owned infrastructure such as buildings and street lights totals about $2.3 million, or $6,300 daily. Owning a turbine could ease the city’s energy burden and, over a longer period, ease property taxes, Leyens said.

While meetings with Massachusetts-based Free Flow Power and Connecticut-based Hydro Green Energy have taken place relating to a turbine purchase, a separate meeting is planned with the Mississippi Development Authority on getting a share of the state’s cut of $1.6 billion in clean renewable energy bonds, one-third of which is available to state and local governments. Investment credits and other incentives were directed at renewable energy projects in the overall $787 billion stimulus bill signed by President Barack Obama in February. Mississippi is expected to receive about $2.8 billion in stimulus funding overall.

When legislators re-convene to tackle the state budget, local lawmakers will be asked to help pass a Vicksburg-specific bill to allow the city to set up a utility company, Leyens said. The budgetary session is expected in a few weeks.

Each turbine would measure 10 feet in diameter and would be installed below navigation depths. Planners have said they resemble jet engines but spin like windmills to generate about 1,600 megawatts for sale to the power grid or single industries. According to project specifications, each turbine would have a typical rated installed capacity of 10 kilowatts and be geared to capture energy from flow velocities of 2 to 4 meters per second. No scenarios show the turbines making enough electricity to fill total demand. Vicksburg and Warren County are mostly served by Entergy’s Baxter-Wilson Plant in Vicksburg that burns fossil fuels to boil water into steam to spin generators and Grand Gulf Nuclear Station that uses heat from a nuclear reactor to boil water into steam, also to spin generators.

Tuesday’s hearings are the first of a series of meetings involving the company’s project. Out of its 55 planned sites, seven proposed nearest to major cities such as Memphis, Baton Rouge and New Orleans are part of an “integrated licensing process.” The sites represent characteristics of the entire Mississippi River system, director of project development Jon Guidroz said.

Plans for smaller sites currently include one beginning in north Warren County near the Brunswick community and another just south of the city limits. Some could be installed between bridge support piers, including both river bridges at Vicksburg. Leyens voiced support for using the Warren County-owned U.S. 80 bridge as an anchor for the project. Bridge commissioners were notified of both companies’ projects more than a year ago but have not taken a firm position.

Meetings involving the smaller sites will be announced at a later date.

Company officials, flanked by officials with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who recorded public comments on the project, emphasized the turbines’ potential effectiveness compared to other alternative energy sources such as wind and solar — seen as more ideal for the Midwest and Southwest.

Irvin called the lower Mississippi River system, the third-largest in the world, “a tremendous water resource” that makes the turbine project viable. Also, Irvin said, the sites will create “a fair amount of green jobs.”

Irvin credited research by the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center on propeller speeds in the river for planned safety features for aquatic wildlife, such as low tip speeds to minimize injuries to fish and wide gaps between propeller blades.

Retired Brig. Gen. Robert Crear, chairman of Free Flow’s development board, missed Tuesday’s public meeting because of a prior commitment, Irvin said, adding the former commander of the Army Corps’ Mississippi Valley Division is seen as critical in helping guide the company through regulatory steps.

FERC must give final approval to proceed on all hydropower applicants. A draft environmental study on Free Flow’s plans is expected in 2011.

Hydro Green Energy, which has already installed a turbine on the Mississippi River in Minnesota, plans sites near Vicksburg and Natchez.

Both firms aim to be fully licensed by FERC by 2012.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com