French firm to help Indian Navy; OTEC power plant to come up at Vizag

Visakhapatnam: Andhra Pradesh is set to play a significant role in the Indian Navy’s tryst and its first attempt to use green energy from ocean. French major DCNS wh-ich is constructing scorpion submarines for the Indian Navy will set up an Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) offshore power plant at Andaman and Nicobar Islands to generate 20mw of power from sea.

A production facility for the OTEC power plant will be established at a district in coastal Andhra Pradesh, preferably along the Visakhapatnam coastline. A Letter of Intent (LoI) in this regard was recently signed by the Andhra Pradesh Economic Development Board (APEDB) and the Indian arm of French company DCNS India Private Limited.

The LoI was signed during the ‘Global CEOs Co-nclave on Aerospace and Defence Manufacturing Opportunities in Andhra Pradesh,’ organised by the APEDB under the Make in India initiative at Aero India 2017 in Bengaluru recently. This LoI was signed by APEDB CEO, Mr J Krishna Kishore, and DCNS India managing director, Mr Bernard Buisson.

Under the OTEC, electricity can produce by using the temperature difference between deep cold ocean water and warm tropical surface waters. OTEC plants pump large quantities of deep cold seawater and surface seawater to run a power cycle and produce electricity.

“Vizag, which houses India’s Eastern Naval Command is seeing a slew of investments ranging from a World Class MRO facility and air cargo complex near Bhogapuram. An MoU with United Shipbuilding Corporation was signed to enable shipbuilding capabilities in Visakhapatnam. And also a naval shipbuilding facility by Reliance defence is coming up at Rambilli in Vizag district. The DCNS facility in all likelihood will come up at Vizag,” said a senior official of the state government.

At present, diesel generators are being used to generate power at the Indian Navy’s Andaman and Nicobar base. OTEC plant will also significantly reduce the pollution generated by the diesel generators at the Andaman and Nicobar base. While the US Navy is pioneer in using green energy for it’s operations, now slowly Indian Navy also started using green energy.