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Alternative-energy ideas await approval

Coming soon - or maybe never - to a light socket near you: Electricity generated by cow manure or the churning of the Gulf Stream.

Entrepreneurs competing for $15 million from the state have flooded Tallahassee, Florida with ideas for creating alternative energy from using french fry grease to exotic ''bio-sensitized solar cells.'' The Renewable Energy Technologies Grant Program was expected to attract about 75 applications. By the Nov. 30 deadline, 180 proposals were waiting at the Department of Environmental Protection's Energy Office.

Competitors, including university researchers, business executives and mom-and-pop companies, will know whether their requests will be funded by the end of next week. A review of proposals the department made public suggests there is no shortage of power sources or imaginative ways to tap them.

Lawmakers will consider doubling the size of the program when they convene next month. There is $15 million in grants but more than $200 million in requests.

''That says there's a lot of healthy ideas out there," said Rep. Bob Allen, R-Merritt Island and chairman of the energy committee. "The ones we want are the ones that have the most immediate market applications.''

Among the requests is an ambitious goal to harness the Gulf Stream.

''There's enough energy out there to power all of Florida,'' said Charles J. Cromer, a veteran program director at the Florida Solar Energy Center in Cocoa.

Cromer's private consulting firm, Solar Engineering Co. of Cocoa Beach, is requesting $998,311 to study the feasibility of sinking turbines about 10 miles off South Florida, probably near Miami or Fort Lauderdale, and using the 4-knot to 5-knot flow of the famous ocean current to turn a generator.

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