France Turns to Waves for Power
France has the honor of operating the worlds first tidal power station the La Ranche , situated on the Rance river. Now France’s Electricite de France (EDF ) , plans to operate 3-6 turbines off the north coast of Brittany. This project is expected to cost nearly $4o million and have an estimated capacity of of 5 MW. This facility is being planned of the coast of Paimpol and is expected to start operation by the year 2011.
EDF envisages tidal power to make a significant contribution in renewable power generation sector in France and estimates potential to generate 10 million MW yearly from tides. Additionally the Paimpol area is believed to be the region having strongest wind currents in Europe. This proposed facility will hence act as a model to analyze technology under dynamic conditions thus allowing for evaluation of performance and more importantly profitability.
Tags: EDF, Electricite de France, european wind power, france, Paimpol, renewable power, tidal energyIf you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
Srikant RajanHi Mark,
I don’t think that there is an adequate power availaible with the waves at the coast ….its more likely that there would be units offshore , where wind power is comparitvely powerful to generate tides…which may be used for power generation
so i would say that ur concerns are addressed! 
July 19, 2008
The problem with using waves for power is that it messes up the look for the coast. In New Zealand we have a lot of costline, but I would want my gov to mess it up with power generation turbines all up and down it.