State-owned Electricite de France is bringing tidal power up to date in the country, announcing plans to put three to six turbines off the northern coast of Brittany.

EDF operates the world's first tidal power plant, the La Rance tidal power station, which was inaugurated in November 1966. It's one of only three barrage plants in the world, and it's the largest, producing 240 megawatts of electricity on the Rance River.

But the La Rance barrage, also sited in the Brittany region, has since fallen out of favor for being too damaging to the environment. Today's systems usually involve individual, sometimes free-floating, turbines, as opposed to the barrage system, which is similar to a dam.

"We are going choose a technology, and pass the contract to some constructors and they will build the turbine, and we will finance them and use them," Caroline Muller, spokeswoman for EDF, told the Cleantech Group.

Muller would not say which companies EDF is talking to, but the energy operator plans to go with firms that have proven systems.

"We have tendered towards constructors that have already tested their prototypes in real conditions," she said.

The grid-connected project is expected to cost between €23 million to €27 million, or $36.4 million to $42.8 million, with a total capacity of between 4 MW and 6 MW. The turbines are expected to go in the water by 2011 off the coast of the city of Paimpol, where EDF said the currents are among the strongest in Europe.

The company said tidal power could make a significant contribution to the production of electricity from renewable sources in the region, with France having the potential to generate 10 million MW hours per year from the tides.

EDF already has a hand in modern tidal power through its EDF Energy unit, which owns a stake in Bristol, England-based Marine Current Turbines.

In April, Marine Current Turbines put its first commercial scale turbine in the water, lowering its 1.2 MW SeaGen system into the fast flowing waters of Strangford Narrows in Northern Ireland (see SeaGen swims into Northern Ireland).

The marine power industry received a boost at the beginning of this year when the government of Nova Scotia, Canada, announced plans to build North America's first tidal power test site in the Bay of Fundy, which has the highest tides in the world (see Bay of Fundy to get three test turbines).

The Bay of Fundy test site will use turbines from Annapolis, Md.'s UEK, Ireland's OpenHydro Group, and Vancouver, British Columbia-based Clean Current.

Currently, the world's only tidal test site is in Orkney, Scotland. The European Marine Energy Centre also tests wave power units.

In May, OpenHydro said it was the first tidal energy company to complete the connection of a tidal turbine to the U.K. national grid and begin generating electricity (see OpenHydro first to generate electricity to U.K. national grid).

OpenHydro's 250 kilowatt Open-Centre turbine was connected to the grid after 18 months of testing at Orkney.

Countries like the U.K. and France are targeting renewable resources as part of an EU-wide plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2020, as compared to 1990 levels.

EDF said its planned tidal project is the culmination of more than four years of consultation and preparatory work along the coasts of Brittany and Normandy.

"This is the first one," said Muller. "We are going to make some studies to check whether this kind of electricity production is viable, and reliable."

"The idea is to launch the French industry in this sector."

The company said the pilot project will allow the technology to be tested under real conditions, allowing its profitability to be assessed, as well as an administrative and legal framework that could lead to the development of a tidal power network in the country.