Tide runs in favour of Solway tidal power project  

The Glasgow Sunday Herald has an article on a plan for a large tidal power project across Solway Firth, between Scotland and England - Tide runs in favour of new £500m Solway renewable power project.

THE SOLWAY Firth is at the centre of £500 million proposals to build a mile-long dam between England and Scotland fitted with energy-generating turbines, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

The proposed tidal barrage, subject of a £60,000-£100,000 feasibility study commissioned by Scottish Enterprise, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and Northwest Regional Development Agency (NRDA), would stretch over the River Solway from Annan in Dumfries & Galloway to Bowness-on-Solway in Cumbria.

Through a series of underwater turbines playing a similar role to those in hydroelectric dams, the projected barrage would be capable of producing up to 300MW of power - the equivalent of a medium-large wind farm. It is also being seen as a means of strengthening flood defences to prevent a recurrence of the 2005 Carlisle flood disaster, also as a rail and road crossing of the river, and potential tourist attraction: Nigel Catterson, chairman of Carlisle social enterprise company NB21C which is promoting the study, said: "North Cumbria and south west Scotland suffer in exactly the same way from being at the edge of regions. They are marginalised to a large extent and forgotten. We are suggesting that if we could come together as a gateway region at the centre of the UK we can start to create a new kind of impression around that."

Allison MacColl, manager of the Scottish Enterprise industries team for the south region, said that the proposals originally date back to the 1960s. The plans were revived by local environmental groups in the wake of similar larger plans for the River Severn and recent research by Liverpool University into the tidal energy potential of rivers discharging into the eastern Irish Sea.

The research found that the Solway was the most promising of the rivers in the region, and was the second most powerful tidal estuary in the country after the Severn. Scotland's Pentland Firth, described as "the Saudi Arabia of tidal power", is a strait, not an estuary.