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Villages set to draw tidal energy in the Sundarbans

Indrani Dutta

Bids to be floated for sourcing equipment; project to be completed by 2010
MNES sanctioned a 90 per cent grant for the Rs. 48 crore project

KOLKATA: Till recently, the people of the Sundarbans archipelago in West Bengal had viewed the tidal waves flowing in from the Bay of Bengal as their source of misery. They feared the giant waves and cyclones which left a trail of destruction.

Even during other times, the salty marshlands of the world’s largest mangrove swamp left little scope for any significant economic activity. They had resigned themselves to an eternal cycle of living life on the edge.

But this may change in about two years, once the country’s first tidal energy project comes up. Tides then, will bring power to the 1.5 lakh people living in the 11 villages that lie scattered around the Durgaduani Creek in the Sundarbans.

The Union Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources (MNES) has recently sanctioned a 90 per cent grant for the Rs.48-crore project. The West Bengal government will meet the remaining cost of this project. The National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) has been chosen the contractor for the project, which is being executed by the West Bengal Green Energy Development Corporation, the corporate entity which has been formed by the West Bengal government to commercialise its renewable energy forays.

S. P. Gonchaudhuri, Managing Director of the corporation, told The Hindu that bids would be soon floated for sourcing equipment for the project, which would be completed by 2010. “The drawings and the designs are being done now,” he said, adding that the feasibility of the project has now been established. “Projects such as these have a high plant load factor and reliability,” he said.

The Sundarbans project will be a demonstrative project which may be replicated , although the Kutch and the Gulf of Cambay in Gujarat are the only two regions in the country where there is known potential of this form of green energy.

For the people living in the villages around the Durgaduani Creek, solar home lighting systems is the only form of electricity known, with the slightly better-off burning gallons of diesel to run polluting generator sets to draw power. Economic activity is restricted to running cold storages for fish (on ice imported from the mainland) and chilli processing. This is set to improve once the tidal power becomes available.

The changes that electricity can bring is evident in some of the other islands in the Sundarbans. From a sleepy marshland, many of the islands now hum with activity. Children need no longer study by carbon dioxide-spewing kerosene lamps and the villages need no longer end all their activities at sunset. Phone kiosks, small shops that have now come up in the areas draw electricity from various forms of renewable energy sources such as the sun, wind, biomass and biogas, which has been harnessed in several of the 53 islands. Mr. Gonchaudhuri says that an eight MW capacity has been created so far for 4.4 million people, who may never have had any access to electric power since they stay in remote areas where conventional power may never reach. Efforts are now on to bring an additional five million people under this coverage by 2012.

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