India aims for Asia's biggest tidal power plant

The western Indian state of Gujarat is aiming to host the first commercial-scale tidal power project in Asia after signing a deal with a British marine energy company, officials said Wednesday.

State Energy Minister Saurabh Patel told AFP that two or three locations had been identified in the Gulf of Kutch where turbines from London-based Atlantis Resources Corporation could be set up.

A preliminary agreement was signed last week between the government and Atlantis which foresees the start of construction later this year, with initial capacity of 50 megawatts (MW) and long-term capacity of up to 250 MW.

Patel said environmental and commercial factors would be taken into consideration, as well as highly sensitive territorial claims in the area where the sea is divided between India and Pakistan.

"We have to take into consideration that the local fishermen are not affected, that there is no harm to the environment and that traffic at the ports in the Gulf region is not affected," he said.

The company said the project would "require hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in tidal turbines," adding that its studies of the waters around Gujarat showed that tides there were strong enough to generate 300MW of power.

Highly industrialised Gujarat, one of the best performing states in the country economically, has installed electricity capacity of more than 11,000 MW at present, meaning tidal power would meet only a fraction of total demand.

D.J. Pandian, chairman of the state-run Gujarat Power Corporation, said in a statement released after the deal was signed that the project "will be India?s and indeed Asia?s first at commercial scale."

To become the first in Asia, the project will need to be completed before South Korea's 254 MW Sihwa Lake tidal power project.



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