If all goes well, by 2012 the world will see its first data center powered by tidal power. Two companies are partnering to build a "Blue Datacenter" in Scotland, with electricity provided by the energy of the waves in the Scottish Pentland Firth, a stretch of water north of the Scottish mainland.

The Singapore-based company Atlantis Resources Corporation is teaming up with the datacenter builder Internet Villages International (IVI), based in Scotland, to build the data center, according to the BBC. Atlantis builds tidal-turbine technology that generates power from the movement of the tides.

Pentland Firth is already being used to generate electricity from the tides. The BBC says that six of the top 10 sites in the UK for producing tidal power are based there. Estimates are that the currents in Pentland Firth could generate 700 megawatts of electricity by 2020, which is enough for about 400,000 homes.

Initially, three tidal arrays would be built, supplying a total of 30 megawatts of the 150 megawatts that the data center will require. If the technology worked out, more tidal arrays would be built --- enough to power the data center, plus supply electricity to be sold to the UK's electric grid, reports vunet.com.