| Abstract |
Launched in October 2011 this project involved Black & Veatch, in collaboration with HR Wallingford and the University of Edinburgh to develop a model of the UK Continental Shelf and North European Waters, 100 times more accurate than existing marine data. This has been used to assess the tidal energy potential around the UK (tidal range and tidal streams), to inform the design of energy harnessing schemes, to assess their interactions, and to evaluate their impact on European coasts. It can also be used to renew and inform flood defences, coastal erosion and aggregate extraction. Now completed, the project has been launched to market under the brand of SMARTtide. This is available to the marine industry under licence from HR Wallingford.
This deliverable is number 3 of 10 in the Tidal Modelling project and describes the scenarios to be used within the project to investigate the potential interactions between energy extraction sites. This report will be updated later in the project once the models have been constructed.
The framework for constructing the various scenarios is to consider likely industry development for tidal range and current technologies on varying time horizons from the 2010 comparator base case scenario (where no significant tidal energy generation exists in UK waters), through to 2050 scenarios where it may be realistic to consider full utilisation of the economically viable UK tidal energy resource. 30 scenarios considering different combinations of future timeframe and development constraints (optimistic, medium, and pessimistic) for tidal current and range technology adoption are investigated.
The Executive summary of the report describes the methodology and the outcomes. Section 5 of the report summarisesthe principal features and constraints of the models. |
